The plaintiff landlord sought, by way of a summary process action, to obtain
possession of an apartment that had been rented to the defendant tenant.
The plaintiff served the defendant with a notice to quit possession of
the apartment and soon thereafter commenced this action. The defen-
dant filed a special defense claiming that the retaliatory eviction statute
(§ 47a-20) barred the plaintiff’s action because the defendant had com-
plained to a municipal authority about housing code violations related
to certain repairs in the apartment and that authority had found viola-
tions of the housing code within six months of the commencement of
the action. The defendant then filed a motion for summary judgment
on that ground. The trial court granted the motion, concluding that
§ 47a-20 barred the action and that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate
that any of the statutory (§ 47a-20a) exceptions to § 47a-20 applied.
The trial court specifically determined that the fitness and habitability
requirements enunciated in Visco v. Cody (16 Conn. App. 444), wherein
this court held that the defects alleged to be in need of repair must
materially affect a leased unit’s fitness and habitability to be a violation
of § 47a-20 (3), did not apply in the circumstance of a municipal agency’s
finding of housing code violations as set forth in § 47a-20 (2). Thereafter,
the defendant appealed to this court, claiming, inter alia, that the trial
court erred in determining that Visco was inapplicable to his defense
of retaliatory eviction under § 47a-20. Following oral argument before
this court, but before the court rendered its judgment, the defendant
vacated and relinquished possession of the subject apartment to the
plaintiff, and the court ordered supplemental briefing on the issue of
mootness and any possible exception thereto because the sole remedy
available to the plaintiff in its summary process action was possession
of the apartment. In their briefs, both parties argued that the issue raised
on appeal, that Visco applied to retaliatory eviction defenses brought
under § 47a-20 (2), satisfied the capable of repetition, yet evading review
exception to the mootness doctrine. Held that the plaintiff’s appeal
was dismissed because it was moot and no exception to the mootness
doctrine was applicable to the facts and circumstances of the appeal:
in the specific context of this appeal and in light of the limited factual
record regarding the mootness issue and the recent procedural history
of the case, the parties failed to satisfy the first prong of the capable
of repetition, yet evading review exception to the mootness doctrine,
which pertains to the length of the challenged action, as this court was
not persuaded that this court or our Supreme Court would not be able
to resolve in a later appeal, with a more complete factual record concern-
ing the fitness and habitability aspect of each of the subject health code
violations, whether the fitness and habitability requirements enunciated
in Visco are applicable to a finding of municipal code violations pursuant
to § 47a-20 (2); furthermore, there was no merit to the plaintiff’s assertion
that the failure of this court to determine in this appeal whether the
fitness and habitability gloss previously applied to § 47a-20 (3) in Visco
was applicable to § 47a-20 (2) would give rise to prejudicial collateral
consequences to landlords in future summary process cases, our appel-
late courts having applied the collateral consequences doctrine only to
instances in which the decision of the trial court gave rise to conse-
quences specific to a party to the case.
Argued March 16—officially released August 22, 2017 Procedural History