JV III Constr. v. Town of Rocky Hill

Full title: JV III CONSTRUCTION, INC. ET AL. v. TOWN OF ROCKY HILL

Court: Connecticut Superior Court Judicial District of Hartford at Hartford

Date published: Jan 24, 2006

2006 Ct. Sup. 1417 (Conn. Super. Ct. 2006)

Opinion

No. CV 00-0803959 S

January 24, 2006

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

MICHAEL R. SHELDON, JUDGE.

In this case, plaintiffs JV III Construction, Inc. ("JV III") and C. White Son, Inc. ("C. White"), two businesses operating fleets of large commercial vehicles from their principal places of business located on or near the southern section of Dividend Road, south of its intersection with Oak Hill Road, in Rocky Hill, Connecticut ("Town" or "Rocky Hill"), have brought suit against the defendant Town to obtain two types of relief. First, they seek a judicial declaration that a certain Town ordinance, under which they have been prohibited from operating trucks in excess of 6,000 pounds on the northern section of Dividend Road, north of its intersection with Oak Hill Road, since November 18, 2000, was enacted in violation of (a) state law, specifically General Statutes § 14-298; (b) the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and (c) Article First, Sections 1, 11 and 20 of the Constitution of Connecticut. Second, they seek individual awards of money damages for losses they claim to have sustained as a result of the Town's enforcement of the challenged ordinance against them, under both 42 U.S.C. § 1983, on the theory that the Town's enforcement of the ordinance has violated their above-referenced federal constitutional right under color of state law; and a State constitutional cause of action equivalent of 42 U.S.C § 1983, on the theory that such enforcement has violated the above-referenced provisions of the Constitution of Connecticut.

The case was tried before this Court on divers days between May 12 and May 25, 2004. Thereafter, upon the preparation and delivery to the parties of full trial transcripts, they briefed the issues now before the Court and presented their final arguments on December 17, 2004. The case was thereupon submitted for the Court's decision pursuant to a joint written waiver of the Practice Book deadline therefor.

Upon reviewing the record developed at trial and considering the written and oral arguments of the parties, the Court hereby makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law on the issues herein presented for its decision:

FINDINGS OF FACT: The Plaintiffs

1. Plaintiff JV III Construction, Inc. ("JV III") is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Connecticut, with its principal place of business at 103 Dividend Road, Rocky Hill, Connecticut ("Rocky Hill" or the "Town"). Incorporated on April 24, 1983, JV III is owned by John Vasel, III and Susan Vasel, a married couple who reside in Rocky Hill. Mr. Vasel has been the president of JV III since March 15, 1984.

2. JV III is involved in excavation, site work, utility installations, paving, street sweeping, demolition, water and sewer main work, and snow removal. To perform this work, it owns and maintains a fleet of over 30 commercial vehicles, each weighing in excess of 6,000 pounds, which it keeps at and operates from its facility at 103 Dividend Road.

3. JV III's Dividend Road facility is located on the east side of Dividend Road, just south of its intersection with Oak Hill Road, in Rocky Hill.

4. At all times relevant to this case, JV III has conducted its business operations by causing commercial vehicles from its Dividend Road facility to travel to and from the company's job sites, customers and vendors by the shortest available routes. When traveling between the Dividend Road facility and job sites, customers and vendors located to the north of Rocky Hill, the company's vehicles routinely use Route 99, a State highway known locally as Main Street. Route 99 traverses the Town from the Town of Cromwell, on the south, to the Town of Wethersfield, on the north, where it becomes known as the Silas Deane Highway. The shortest route between JV III's Dividend Road facility and the start of the Silas Deane Highway involves traveling north northwest on Dividend Road until it intersects with Main Street, then turning right on Main Street and traveling north northeast to the Wethersfield town line.

5. Plaintiff C. White Son, Inc. ("C. White Son") is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Connecticut, with its principal place of business at 28 Evans Road in Rocky Hill. Although C. White Son was not incorporated until October 3, 1962, it has been operating at its present location since the early 1950s.

6. Owen White is the president of C. White Son. His brother, Alan White, is its vice president and treasurer. Owen and Alan White began working full-time for C. White Son after the untimely death of their father, Clifford White, on March 21, 1990.

7. C. White Son transports bulk petroleum products throughout New England. To perform this work, it owns and maintains a fleet of 24 commercial transport vehicles, each weighing in excess of 6,000 pounds, which it operates from its facility at 28 Evans Road.

8. C. White Son's Evans Road facility is located to the south of Oak Hill Road and the east of Dividend Road, on premises extending from Evans Road, on the south, to Laurel Road, on the north.

9. At all times relevant to this case, C. White Son has conducted its petroleum transport business by routing commercial transport vehicles from its Evans Road facility to oil terminals in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, picking up product at those locations and delivering it to nearby customers, then returning to the Evans Road facility, all by the shortest available routes. When product pickups and deliveries are made at terminals located to the north of Rocky Hill — including those in Wethersfield and East Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts — the company routinely routes its vehicles to and from such terminals over Interstate 91. The closest entrance to the northbound lanes of Interstate 91 from C. White Son's Evans Road facility is at Exit 24 in Wethersfield, which is accessed directly from the Silas Deane Highway. The shortest route between the C. White Son's Evans Road facility and the start of the Silas Deane Highway involves traveling west on Evans Road or Laurel Road to Dividend Road, turning right on Dividend Road and traveling north northwest until it intersects with Main Street, then turning right on Main Street and traveling north northeast to the Wethersfield town line.

The Defendant

10. The Town of Rocky Hill is a Connecticut municipality that is bounded to the north by the Town of Wethersfield, to the south by the Town of Cromwell, to the east by the Town of Glastonbury, and to the west by the Towns of Berlin and Newington.

11. The Town is empowered under the Connecticut General Statutes to adopt ordinances through its Town Council (the "Council"). At all times relevant to this case, the Council has consisted of nine persons, including eight Council Members and the Mayor, all of whom are elected for two-year terms.

12. The Council sets Town policy at regularly scheduled public meetings which are typically held twice each month. The agenda for each such meeting is prepared by the Mayor, with the assistance of the Clerk of the Council ("Clerk"). The Clerk mails the agenda to each Council Member approximately five days before the meeting, together with the Minutes of the last Council meeting, which are prepared by transcribing the Clerk's shorthand notes concerning the business transacted at the last meeting. The Clerk's notes describe all official actions taken at the meeting and summarize all statements made thereat, including not only those of the Mayor and all other Members of the Council, but those of all members of the public who spoke either at the meeting or at any public hearing held before or during the meeting. In the year 2000, the Mayor of Rocky Hill was the Honorable Antonio Guerrera, then a former Member of the Council, who has since been elected State Representative from Rocky Hill. The Clerk of the Council in that time frame was Ms. Barbara Gilbert, then the Town Clerk and Assistant Town Manager, who has since been appointed Town Manager.

13. Town policy, as established by the Council, is implemented by the Town Manager, whom the Council appoints. The Town Manager manages the day-to-day business of the Town, generally overseeing and coordinating the work of all Town departments, officials and employees. In the year 2000, the Town Manager was Mr. Nicholas LaRosa.

14. At all times relevant to this case, the Town has organized its work force into separate departments, each of which perform different municipal functions. In the year 2000 they included: the Police Department, headed by Police Chief George Marinelli; the Fire Department, headed by Fire Chief Joseph Kochanek; and the Engineering and Highway Department, headed by the Director of Engineering and Highways James Sollmi, the former Town Engineer.

15. In addition to attending bi-monthly public meetings, Council Members serve on various standing committees. Each standing committee is charged with overseeing and developing potential solutions for problems involving the delivery of particular services for which the Town is legally responsible and/or the performance of particular functions on behalf of the Town. Such standing committees also hold regularly scheduled public meetings, which are typically attended by the particular Town officials who are principally responsible for delivering the services or performing the functions with which the committee is concerned.

16. At all times relevant to this case, one standing committee of the Council has been the Public Safety Committee ("PSC"). The PSC is a three-member committee that meets regularly with the Police Chief, the Fire Chief, the Director of Engineering and Highways and/or the Town Manager to discuss public safety issues of all kinds, including but not limited to issues concerning traffic safety on the Town's roads and highways. In the year 2000, the PSC was chaired by Council Member Richard Pawlich, who had first been elected to the Council in November 1999. The other members of the PSC at that time were Council Members John Lecci and John McConnell. The PSC was then staffed by Director of Engineering and Highways James Sollmi, who regularly attended its meetings and did engineering consulting work for it whenever he was asked to.

17. Most citizen complaints about traffic problems on the Town's roads and highways are handled by the Police Department. The Police Department typically responds to such complaints by referring them to its Patrol Commander, who assigns them to a traffic officer to investigate, assess, and, if possible, resolve.

18. On occasion, the Police Department responds to traffic complaints by conducting directed patrols. A directed patrol is a focused surveillance of an affected area to detect or deter motorists who, by violating local traffic laws, have caused or contributed to the condition complained of. On other occasions, the Police Department responds to traffic complaints by conducting traffic surveys or traffic studies. A traffic survey involves monitoring the affected area to determine if the complained-of condition exists, and if so, to determine how best to remedy it. A traffic study involves taking a mere comprehensive look at the traffic flow pattern in the area, examining such variables as topography, lines of sight, the nature of the local zoning in the area, the presence of traffic control signs and signals on nearby streets, and the numbers, types, rates of speed, points of origin and destinations of the vehicles using those streets.

19. If it is determined that the condition complained of or probable solutions for it requires special expertise that the Police Department does not have, the Patrol Commander will typically refer the complaint to another responsible Town official for appropriate action. In this regard, the Town's ultimate traffic authority is the Town Manager, who can, if necessary, commission an outside traffic study of the area by a traffic engineering firm to obtain a detailed professional assessment of the condition complained of and how best to deal with it.

The Challenged Ordinance — Initial Steps

20. Sometime prior to June 15, 2000, Town Manager LaRosa asked Town Attorney Michael Heneghan to draft a proposed ordinance to restrict truck traffic on the northern section of Dividend Road in Rocky Hill, in the area extending from its intersection with Main Street, on the north, to some unspecified point of restriction further south. The Town Manager's reason for proposing such an ordinance was to respond to local residents' numerous complaints about local truck traffic. It does not appear from the record that any such complaint was ever referred to the Police Department for investigation, assessment or enforcement purposes. Hence, the Police Department never conducted a traffic survey, a traffic study or a directed patrol of the area, and no formal traffic study by an outside consultant was ever commissioned.

21. Mr. LaRosa suggested that Attorney Heneghan base the proposed ordinance upon the Forest Street Ordinance,¹ under which, since 1978, the Town had prohibited most large trucks weighing over 6,000 pounds from operating on nearby Forest Street, a two-way, two-lane residential street without sidewalks, measuring approximately 31.7 feet from shoulder to shoulder, that runs between Dividend Road and Main Street. In C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, 181 Conn. 114, 434 A.2d 949 (1980), the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the Ordinance over a challenge by present plaintiff C. White Son, which had claimed that the Town's unilateral imposition of a 6,000-pound weight limit on trucks using Forest Street constituted the unlawful regulation of "through truck traffic" without approval by the State Traffic Commission ("STC"), in violation of General Statutes § 14-298.² The reasons for the Court's conclusion were that the Forest Street Ordinance regulated all trucks, not just "through trucks," that Forest Street is an internal street in Rocky Hill on which "through trucks" do not typically travel, and that the Ordinance's prohibition of trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds from using Forest Street did not deprive their owners and operators, including plaintiff C. White Son, of a reasonable and practical alternative route through the Town.

1 Ordinance #68-78, entitled "Ordinance Prohibiting Commercial Truck Traffic On Forest Street," provides as follows:

Definition: Truck means every commercial motor vehicle other than public safety, education, municipal and municipal purpose vehicles having a gross weight of 6000 pounds and/or over and designed, used and maintained primarily for the transportation of property and includes a motor vehicle designed and used for the purpose of drawing a semi-trailer as well as the vehicle drawing the semi-trailer and the semi-trailer.

No person shall operate any truck on Forest Street except while on a trip with a point of origin from or destination on Forest Street.

Penalty: Any person violating the terms of the ordinance shall be fined not more than $50.00 for each offense.

2 Section 14-298 provides as follows:

There shall be within the Department of Transportation a State Traffic Commission. Said Traffic Commission shall consist of the Commissioner of Transportation, the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. For the purpose of standardization and uniformity, said commission shall adopt and cause to be printed for publication regulations establishing a uniform system of traffic control signals, devices, signs and markings consistent with the provisions of this chapter for use upon the public highways. The commissioner shall make known to the General Assembly the availability of such regulations and any requesting member shall be sent a written copy or electronic storage media of such regulations by the commissioner. Taking into consideration the public safety and convenience with respect to the width and character of the highways and roads affected, the density of traffic thereon and the character of such traffic, said commission shall also adopt regulations, in cooperation and agreement with local traffic authorities, governing the use of state highways and roads on state-owned properties, and the operation of vehicles including but not limited to motor vehicles, as defined by Section 14-1, and bicycles, as defined by Section 14-286, thereon. A list of limited-access highways shall be published with such regulations and said list shall be revised and published once each year. The commissioner shall make known to the General Assembly the availability of such regulations and list and any requesting member shall be sent a written copy or electronic storage media of such regulations and list by the commissioner. A list of limited-access highways opened to traffic by the Commissioner of Transportation in the interim period between publications shall be maintained in the office of the State Traffic Commission and such regulations shall apply to the use of such listed highways. Said commission shall also make regulations, in cooperation and agreement with local traffic authorities, respecting the use by through truck traffic of streets and highways within the limits of, and under the jurisdiction of, any city, town or borough of this state for the protection and safety of the public. If said commission determines that the prohibition of through truck traffic on any street or highway is necessary because of an immediate and imminent threat to the public health and safety and the local traffic authority is precluded for any reason from acting on such prohibition, the commission, if it is not otherwise precluded from so acting, may impose such prohibition. Said commission may place and maintain traffic control signals, signs, markings and other safety devices, which it deems to be in the interests of public safety, upon such highways as come within the jurisdiction of said commission as set forth in Section 14-297. The traffic authority of any city, town or borough may place and maintain traffic control signals, signs, markings and other safety devices upon the highways under its jurisdiction, and all such signals, devices, signs and markings shall conform to the regulations established by said commission in accordance with this chapter, and such traffic authority shall, with respect to traffic control signals, conform to the provisions of Section 14-299.

(Emphasis added.)

The Challenged Ordinance — Affected Area

22. At all times relevant to this case, Dividend Road has been a two-way, two-lane Town road without sidewalks, measuring approximately 27 feet from shoulder to shoulder, that runs generally north and south, to the east of Main Street, extending from its intersection with Main Street, on the north, to its intersection with Old Forge Drive, on the south. On its way from Main Street to Old Forge Drive, Dividend Road crosses or intersects with the following roads and streets: (a) Pratt Street, a cross street; (b) Meyers Drive, which runs to the northeast; (c) Woodland Road, which runs to the east northeast; (d) Stanley Court, which runs to the west; (e) Wells Road, which runs to the west southwest; (f) Lord Street, which runs to the west southwest; (g) Oak Hill Road, which runs to the east; (h) Forest Street, which runs to the west; (i) Old Dividend Road, which runs to the southwest; (j) Laurel Road, which runs to the east; (k) Evans Road, a cross street; and (l) Mill Road, which runs to the west. The layout of the Dividend Road and other nearby streets and highways is depicted on the following map:

Trial Exhibit #33.

23. The area extending south along Dividend Road from Pratt Street to just north of Woodland Street is designated under Town Zoning Regulations as an R-15 zone. An area designated as an R-15 zone is a "higher-density residential zoning district" consisting of 15,000-square foot lots, where the general permitted uses are single-family dwellings, farms, orchards and crop and livestock raising. The area extending further south along Dividend, from just north of Woodland Street to Oak Hill Road, is designated as an R-20 Zone. The lots in an R-20 zone, which is also a residential designation, measure 20,000 square feet, and thus are somewhat larger than those in an R-15 zone. Even so, the general permitted uses in an R-20 zone are identical to those in an R-15 zone.

24. Section 6.24 of the Zoning Regulations provides, inter alia, that:

Commercial vehicles are allowed in R-15, R-20, R-40 NC Zoning Districts under the following conditions:

A. A commercial vehicle up to a gross vehicle weight of 9,000 lbs shall be permitted.

B. Commercial vehicles exceeding 11,000 lbs gross vehicle weight shall not be permitted.

* * * *

Town Zoning Regulations (Trial Exhibit #29), p. 74.

25. The area extending south along Dividend Road from Oak Hill Road to Evans Road is a Manufacturing zone. At all times relevant to this case, this is the zone where the plaintiffs' commercial facilities were located. In 1996, an R-15 zone was carved into the Manufacturing zone on Dividend Road. The area extending further south along Dividend from Evans Road to Old Forge Road is an "OI" zone, which stands for "Office Industry."

26. Traveling west from Old Forge Road to Main Street there is mixture of manufacturing, commercial and residential zoning. The residential zone is designated R-15. Immediately behind the manufacturing zone is an R-20 zone.

27. From the intersection of Old Forge Road and Main Street to the intersection of Pratt Street and Main Street, there are three types of zone: R-15, R-20 and "NC," or "Neighborhood Commercial." An NC zone consists of smaller personal service businesses that service the surrounding neighborhood. Members of the general public are more likely to frequent the businesses located in an NC zone, where they can buy commodities such as milk or gas, than the businesses located in an OI zone.

The Challenged Ordinance — Preliminary Drafting and Discussion by the PSC

28. Attorney Heneghan complied with Mr. LaRosa's request to draft a proposed ordinance by obtaining a copy of the Forest Street Ordinance, familiarizing himself with the Supreme Court's C. White Son decision, conferring with the STC about the meaning of the term "through truck traffic," as used in Section 14-298, then preparing a first draft of the proposed ordinance which read as follows:

PRELIMINARY DRAFT

As used in this Article, the following terms shall have the meanings indicated:

TRUCK — Every commercial motor vehicle other than public safety, educational, municipal purpose vehicles having a gross weight of six thousand (6,000) pounds and/or over and designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property and including a motor vehicle designed and used for the purpose of drawing a semitrailer, as well as the vehicle drawing the semitrailer and the semitrailer.

§ 230-5 Restrictions on certain street.

No person shall operate any truck on that section of Dividend Road north of Evans Road except while on a trip with a point of origin from or destination on said section of Dividend Road.

§ 230-6 Erection of signs.

The Chief of Police shall cause to be erected appropriate signs on said section of Dividend Road, which signs shall clearly spell out that all truck traffic is prohibited on the Dividend Road section.

§ 230-7 Penalties for offenses.

Any person violating the terms of this ordinance shall be fined twenty-five dollars ($25.) per day, each day's continued violation constituting a separate offense.

Preliminary Draft (Trial Exhibit #11).

29. Had the proposed ordinance been adopted as initially drafted, it would have had no effect upon the operations of either plaintiff, for under that draft, both businesses would have been located within the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, which trucks of all sizes could freely use on any trip with a point of origin or destination therein. On or about June 15, 2000, however, shortly before Mr. LaRosa first presented the proposed ordinance to the PSC for discussion, Attorney Heneghan prepared a second draft in which he proposed that the southern boundary of the restricted zone for large truck traffic be moved further north on Dividend Road, from its intersection with Evans Road, just south of C. White Son's facility, to its intersection with Woodland Road, four streets north of JV III's facility. Preliminary Draft — Dividend Road Truck Ordinance (6/15/00) (Trial Exhibit #11). Both drafts were circulated to the PSC and discussed as "new business" at its regular meeting of June 22, 2000. PSC Minutes (6/22/00) [Trial Exhibit #12], p. 1.

30. According to the Minutes of the June 22, 2000 meeting, the PSC's introduction to and initial discussion of the proposed ordinance proceeded as follows:

. . . Attorney Heneghan referred to [General] Statute[s §]12-298 (sic), which says that a town cannot in any way try to regulate through traffic. Through traffic is defined under State Traffic Commission definitions, and under the Attorney General's opinion of 1954 (sic), as traffic that originates in one town, goes through another town, and may end up in another town. The State Traffic Commission does not want to have towns passing ordinances that will disrupt intertown traffic. The statutes allow towns to regulate traffic on internal roads when their traffic is not considered to be through traffic. The ordinance on Forest Street has been in existence since 1980 (sic). It was upheld because it did not regulate through traffic, but traffic that was on an internal Town street.

The proposed ordinance uses 6,000 pounds as a gross weight for vehicles, because vehicles greater than that weight are considered to cause noise and damage to the highway. The other issue is that the traffic cannot be restricted for anyone arriving or leaving from that street. Forest Street is mostly all residential. The court made a point of saying that the Town of Rocky Hill had put in Old Forge Road to help alleviate the traffic.

Attorney Heneghan has tried to fashion this ordinance after the ordinance on Forest Street. He has been in touch with the State Traffic Commission on this. The draft ordinance allowed the people to have a point of origin from or to a destination on a section of Dividend Road. Attorney Heneghan had chosen Evans Road to delineate the section of Dividend Road, but noted the Committee may want to use Woodland Road. The proposed ordinance states that no person can operate a truck 6,000 pounds or over on the section north of Dividend Road starting at Evans Road. The penalty was listed at $25. Attorney Heneghan would provide the Committee with copies of the case that Rocky Hill was involved in.

[Fire] Chief Kochanek noted the original ordinance was written because of the concerns of the residents with children in the area, and heavy vehicles and the noise. He recommended that Evans Road be extended further north up to Woodland Road because of the Citgo fuel depot and the Vasel Brothers operation.

Mr. LaRosa noted the trucks should be prohibited by entering from Main Street. There is no problem with people coming down Old Forge Road. He was concerned that if the distance was pushed up to Woodland Road, the veh[ic]les may enter from Old Forge and turn around. He wanted to be clear that this draft ordinance was a result of the residents' complaints. The group discussed the reasons for the gross vehicle weight limit of 6,000 pounds. [Police] Chief Marinelli noted the weight included the vehicle plus the load.

Mr. Sollmi recommended putting signs on all the side roads, so that when trucks exit to make a left turn towards Old Forge Road, they would have to head south. Mr. LaRosa asked Mr. Heneghan to redraft the ordinance, after the placement and wording of signs was looked into.

Chairman Pawlich thanked the Town Manager, Town Attorney, and Councilmen Lecci and McConnell for their efforts on the ordinance. Mr. Sollmi added that in another month, the road will be closed because of bridge construction. The road will be closed for about four months.

PSC Minutes (6/22/00) (Trial Exhibit #12), pp. 2-3.

31. At its next regularly scheduled meeting on August 24, 2000, the PSC continued its discussion of the Dividend Road Truck Ordinance as "old business." According to the Minutes of that meeting, the PSC's further discussion of the proposed Ordinance proceeded as follows:

The draft ordinance was reviewed and discussed by the Committee. The Town Attorney had requested that the point of inception be changed. Mr. Sollmi questioned whether Forest Street might be the best place for the change. He discussed installing" no through truck" signs. He recommended installing weight restriction signs. He recommended that the item be added to the Town Council agenda in November.

Chief Marinelli had contacted the state. He interpreted the ordinance and the wording "no through trucks" to mean trucks that originate outside of Rocky Hill and travel through Rocky Hill, with no scheduled stops in Rocky Hill.

Mr. Lakosa interpreted the ordinance to mean that if a truck had a stop to make on Dividend Road, its presence was valid; if it had no stop to make the vehicle should not be on Dividend Road. He would request the official interpretation from the State. Mr. Sollmi recommended that the weight signs be posted; he noted the difficulty with enforcement of the" no through trucks" signs. MOTION by John McConnell to endorse the Dividend Road ordinance, corrected to say north of Forest Street, and bring it to the Town Council with a review of Oak Hill by the attorney to interpret and finalize.

John Lecci seconded the motion, which carried unanimously.

PSC Minutes (8/24/00) (Trial Exhibit #14), pp. 1-2.

32. Following the August 24, 2000 meeting of the PSC, Attorney Heneghan prepared a final draft of the proposed Dividend Road Truck Ordinance, wherein the daily fine per violation was raised from $25 to $50 and the southern boundary of the restricted section of Dividend Road was changed from Forest Street to Oak Hill Road, just north of plaintiff JV III's facility, at the northern edge of the Manufacturing zone. Agreeing with those changes at its next regularly scheduled meeting on September 28, 2000, the PSC voted unanimously to approve the final draft for submission to the Council in the following form:

PROPOSED ORDINANCE PROHIBITING COMMERCIAL TRUCK TRAFFIC ON PART OF DIVIDEND ROAD

1. Definitions

As used in this ordinance, the following terms shall have the meaning indicated: TRUCK — Every commercial motor vehicle other than public safety, education, municipal purpose vehicles having a gross weight of six thousand (6,000) pounds and/or over and designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property and including a motor vehicle designed and used for the purpose of drawing a semi-trailer, as well as the vehicle drawing the semi-trailer and the semi-trailer.

2. Restrictions

No person shall operate any truck on that section of Dividend Road north of Oak Hill Road except while on a trip with a point of origin from or destination on said section of Dividend Road.

3. Erection of signs

The Chief of Police shall cause to be erected appropriate signs on said section of Dividend Road, which signs shall clearly spell out that all truck traffic is prohibited on the Dividend Road section.

4. Penalties for offenses

Any person violating the terms of this ordinance shall be fined fifty (50) dollars per offense; each day's continued violations constituting a separate offense.

This ordinance will take effect in accordance with the Charter.

Trial Exhibit #18.

The Challenged Ordinance — Consideration and Adoption by the Town Council

33. So drafted, the Dividend Road Truck Ordinance was first presented to the full Town Council by PSC Chairman Pawlich on October 2, 2000. Thereafter, it was made the subject of a duly noticed public hearing on October 16, 2000, just before the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Council.

34. According to the Minutes of the October 16, 2000 public hearing, the following comments were made thereat in support of the proposed ordinance:

Councilor Pawlich noted in 1974 the Town built Old Forge Drive and the intention was when this road was built that all truck traffic would use Old Forge Drive, and ordinance was prepared prohibiting truck traffic on Forest Street and it was upheld by the State's Supreme Court.

* * * *

The Town Manager noted he has received many complaints about truck traffic on Dividend Road at all hours of the day and night. The truck traffic has been causing some serious damage to the homes along Dividend Road. Parents are concerned about the safety of their children and the Town has just expended $400,000 to repair the bridge on Dividend Road because it was not built for truck traffic of the magnitude that is down there.

Mr. Jim LaMarre, 92 Dividend Road noted on several occasions he has called the terminal and complained about the trucks putting on their J brakes. He noted he is in favor of this proposed ordinance. He noted he approached the Council about a year ago asking for help in getting trucks off of Dividend Road. There are a lot of small children on Dividend Road and he has counted as many as seventy trucks coming out of the terminal, half go up Dividend Road and the other half go down Old Forge Drive. On the return trips when the trucks are empty they all seem to come down Dividend Road. The speed limit on Dividend Road is 30 mph but these trucks are doing 50 to 55 mph.

Mr. Bostwick, 73 Woodland Road noted there are twenty-two children who live on Woodland Road and a lot of those kids walk up Dividend Road to the center of Town. When these kids are walking on Dividend Road he has seen trucks go speeding by and actually come up on the curb within a few feet of the kids walking, and the draft of the trucks almost pulls you into it. Mr. Bostwick stated he is in favor of this ordinance.

Mrs. Gail Vernali, Stanley Court stated that she would like to reiterate what has been said about the safety factor. These trucks go speeding down Dividend Road creating a hazard for anyone near the roadway.

Mrs. Rosie Parks, 74 Dividend Road noted that she has lived there for many years and the truck traffic has become much worse, all you hear at night is the trucks speeding by. They have damaged many of the homes as they go by.

Minutes of Public Hearing (10/16/00), pp. 2-3 (Trial Exhibit #21). Thereafter, the Minutes of the public hearing reflect that the following statements were made in opposition to the proposed ordinance.

Ms. Barbara White, 21 Danforth Lane noted this area has been established as an industrial area for many years and those people moving into the area should have know[n] this when they purchased their homes. She believes having the trucks go down Dividend Road to Old Forge is very costly and detrimental to the businesses in the area.

Ms. Canfield noted she represents Rocky Hill Automotive who own and operate a tow truck business on Dividend Road. This ordinance would add both time and cost to their business, it increases the travel time to the center of town from 2.2 miles to 3.5 miles and adds 5.5 miles to the trip depending on the time of day. She noted she understands the residents['] concerns but this area has been an industrial area for many years.

Mrs. Susan Vasel, 93 Dividend Road noted she and her husband operate JV III Construction Co. They knew when they moved into this area that it was not a residential area. As far as the bridge over Dividend Road that was their tax dollars and they pay a considerable sum.

Mr. Alan White noted many of the businesses were there before the homes were built.

Mr. John Vasel, 93 Dividend Road noted Old Forge Road is only 22 feet wide whereas Dividend Road is 27 feet across. The Dividend Road area is considered an industrial area for many years and he does not feel the traffic should be restricted at this time.

Mr. John Connolly, Citco (sic) Petroleum noted daily about 60 trucks leave his terminal and this ordinance would have a negative impact on his operation as truck[s] would have to go out of their way to use Old Forge Road, he believes they are just transferring the problem.

Mr. John Palazzo, Palazzo Construction noted his concern is this is an industrial area and even though a subdivision was built behind his business it is still an industrial area. Mr. Palazzo noted he is not in favor of the proposed ordinance.

Id., pp. 3-4.

35. Following the public hearing, the Town Council began its regularly scheduled meeting by taking up the proposed ordinance. Town Council Minutes (10/16/00) (Trial Exhibit #21), p. 1. After unanimously agreeing to amend Section 4 of the proposed ordinance to specify a fine of $50 "per offense" instead of $50 "per day," the Council discussed it as follows:

Councilor [Barbara] Surwilo questioned whether the weight restriction was going to create a hardship for residents who may own trucks.

It was noted the weight restriction should affect (sic) the average homeowner.

Councilor Surwilo noted she is trying to get a sense of whether they are being too restrictive or not. The Town spent considerable money putting in Old Forge Road with the intention all truck traffic would use it, rather than going down Dividend Road or Forest Street. She also believes they must protect (sic) the physical harassment of the people along Dividend Road.

Mayor Guerrera noted this ordinance protects the people on Dividend Road.

Councilor Warnat noted he hopes the Manager will have a meeting with the business owners in the area before the ordinance takes effect explaining to them what this ordinance does.

Councilor Lecci suggested letters be sent to the businesses on Dividend Road informing them that this ordinance has been adopted and that it takes effect on such and such a date. This gives the business owners ample time to make adjustments. He noted this is obviously a situation where you can understand both sides of the argument, and it is his feeling this ordinance is proposed in the spirit of compromise to protect the safety of all of our citizens. He can sympathize with businesses having to spend additional money and time, however that the numbers would pale [in] comparison if someone were hurt. They need to look at it as a compromise and a little inconvenience.

Mayor Guerrera noted as was stated earlier this is for the safety of the children and residents of the area and he will be voting in favor of this ordinance.

Id., pp. 1-2 (Trial Exhibit #21). At the end of this discussion, the Council voted unanimously to adopt the proposed ordinance, amended as aforesaid. So approved, the Ordinance was duly published on October 19, 2000, and thus became effective under the Town Charter thirty days later, on November 18, 2000.

36. Three Members of the Council who attended the October 16, 2000 public hearing and Council Meeting testified at trial as to their personal reasons for voting in favor of the Ordinance. Former Mayor Guerrera recalled that he had supported the Ordinance for several reasons, including: to reduce noise in the area, especially that caused by truckers' use of their J (or "jake") brakes at night; to reduce damage to the roadway and nearby buildings caused by vibrations from passing trucks; and, generally, to make the roadway and the land adjacent to it safer for use by local residents, especially children, than it had become with large numbers of large trucks making heavy use of' it. The former Mayor did not recall, however, ever hearing about traffic problems on Dividend Road before the public hearing, even though he had served on the Council from 1997 to 1999, before he was elected Mayor, and had then been a member of the PSC. He also could not recall why the Council had decided to adopt a 6,000-pound weight limit for trucks traveling on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, or why Oak Hill Road had been made the southern boundary of the restricted section instead of some point further north or south along the Road.

37. Council Member Barbara Surwilo testified that, as a 32-year resident of Rocky Hill, an elected Member of the Town Council from 1993 to 1995 and from 1997 to the time of trial, and a 12-year member of the Town Planning and Zoning Commission ("PZC") before she first joined the Council, she had been well aware of the heavy truck traffic on Dividend Road, on which she often traveled, and of local residents' complaints about such truck traffic, long before the public hearing and Council Meeting on October 16, 2000. Residents' complaints, she recalled, concerned the safety of pedestrians, especially children, in the area, when large trucks rolled past them on the narrow, hilly roadway, as well as damage caused by such trucks to the roadway and to nearby buildings and great noise generated by truck traffic at all hours of the day and night. Ms. Surwilo recalled voting for the Ordinance to address those very problems, based not only upon what she had heard about them from others, at the public hearing and beforehand, but upon what she had personally observed in the affected area.

38. Ms. Surwilo further testified that she was aware, when she voted for the Ordinance, that enactment of the Ordinance would not eliminate all large truck traffic from the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, but only some of it. In particular, she claims to have understood that, by establishing the southern boundary of the restricted section at the intersection of Dividend Road and Oak Hill Road, the Council effectively exempted from the Ordinance at least two businesses that regularly used trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds — DiMartino Construction, Inc., owned by Roger DiMartino, and Vasel Brothers Construction Co., Inc., owned by Henry Vasel, the brother of JV III's President, John Vasel, III — both of which she knew to be located within the restricted section, between Oak Hill Road and Main Street. Ms. Surwilo described this arrangement as a compromise.

39. Even so, Ms. Surwilo had expected the Ordinance to result in the diversion of a substantial proportion of the heavy truck traffic that had previously used the northern section of Dividend Road to drive to Wethersfield to reach that location by a different route, to wit: by driving south on Dividend Road, through a manufacturing area, to Old Forge Road; then driving west on Old Forge Road — a divided, four-lane road that had been specially designed and constructed to handle heavy commercial traffic from the nearby industrial park — to Main Street; then, finally, driving north on Main Street, past its intersection with the northern end of Dividend Road, to the Wethersfield town line.

40. Like former Mayor Guerrera, however, Ms. Surwilo could not recall why the Council had decided to adopt a 6,000-pound weight restriction for trucks traveling on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, or why it had limited the application of that restriction to particular types of heavy trucks — specifically, those designed, used and maintained primarily for the transportation of property, including motor vehicles designed and used for the purpose of drawing semi-trailers, as well as vehicles drawing semi-trailers and semi-trailers carrying property. Nor could she explain why the Council had decided to set the southern boundary of the restricted section of the Road at its intersection with Oak Hill Road instead of at some point further north or south.

41. Council Member Richard Pawlich, who presented the Ordinance to the Council on behalf of the PSC, recalled voting for the Ordinance for essentially the same reasons as those described by former Mayor Guerrera and Council Member Surwilo. He, however, made it clear that, by supporting the Ordinance, he both sought and expected to eliminate all large truck traffic from the restricted northern section of Dividend Road. Candidly, he admitted that he had "goofed" by voting for the Ordinance, as written, for he incorrectly believed, when he did so, that no business regularly using trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds was located on or near the restricted northern section of Dividend Road.

42. The Town Council did not have any of the following kinds of specific information when it voted to adopt the Ordinance:

a. It had no specific information as to the average volume of truck traffic on any part of Dividend Road at any hour of the day or night

b. It had no information as to whether or not, and if so with what frequency, operators of trucks subject to regulation under the Ordinance sped, rolled through stop signs or committed other potentially dangerous traffic violations on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

c. It had no information whether or not 30 mph was an excessive speed for the safe movement of large truck traffic on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road, or whether or not that part of the Road was so configured as to make enforcement of the existing speed limit impracticable.

d. It had no information as to the past occurrence of traffic accidents on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road. It thus had no information as to whether any such accidents, if any, involved trucks, local children or other pedestrians.

e. It did not have precise counts as to the numbers of residential homes that were located on the pre-existing truck route between the plaintiffs' business facilities and the Silas Deane Highway, along the northern section of Dividend Road, between Oak Hill Road and Main Street or the new route by which trucks subject to the prohibition of the Ordinance would be required to take to reach the Wethersfield town line — that is: driving south on Dividend Road to Old Forge Road, west on Old Forge Road to Main Street, then north on Main Street to the Silas Deane Highway.

f. It had no specific scientific or engineering information as to any special dangers to public safety posed by trucks subject to regulation under the Ordinance — that is, weighing more than 6,000 pounds and designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property — as opposed to lighter vehicles of all kinds or equally heavy vehicles designed, used or maintained primarily for other purposes. Both limitations were borrowed directly from the Forest Street Ordinance, which had been upheld by the trial court in C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, over challenges by C. White Son that it was adopted without approval by the State Traffic Commission, in alleged violation of General Statutes § 14-298, and that its prohibition of large truck traffic on Forest Street was based upon an arbitrary, irrational, and thus unconstitutional classification of prohibited vehicles.

g. It had no report from any Town official confirming that any homes or other buildings on or near the restricted northern section of Dividend Road had been damaged by vibrations from passing trucks.

h. It had no information as to the nature and frequency of complaints from local residents in the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road, about excessive noise from passing trucks, or the results of the investigation of any such complaint.

43. In considering and adopting the Ordinance as aforesaid, the Council did not consider, as possible alternatives to so doing, taking any of the following courses of action:

a. Installing sidewalks along the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

b. Installing speed bumps on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

c. Erecting new stop signs or traffic control signals on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

d. Reducing the speed limit from 30 mph to a lower speed on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

e. Conducting more frequent police patrols on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

f. Adopting a new Town ordinance establishing noise limits for commercial activity on the northern section of Dividend Road, between Main Street and Oak Hill Road.

The Challenged Ordinance — Rejection of Post-Adoption Proposal to Amend

44. Consistent with Mr. Pawlich's testimony that he did not learn until after the Ordinance was adopted that certain businesses which operated large trucks were located in the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, and thus were exempt from the Ordinance. To remedy this oversight, Mr. Pawlich proposed an amendment to the Ordinance on January 16, 2001. The proposed amendment would have moved the southern boundary of the restricted northern section of Dividend Road further north along the Road to its intersection with Meyers Drive. Had the amendment been adopted, no business regularly operating trucks weighing more than 6,000 pounds would have been located within the restricted section of Dividend Road, or would thus have been exempted from the requirements of the amended Ordinance. The amendment was not adopted, however, after it was brought to the attention of the Council, at the public hearing held before the Council Meeting, that if it were passed, trucks from the three exempted businesses would be required to drive their trucks past many more homes on Dividend Road than if they continued to drive the much shorter distance north to the intersection of Dividend Road and Main Street. Minutes of Public Hearing (1/16/01) (Trial Exhibit #23), p. 2. The comments of these two witnesses, Mr. Henry Vasel of Vasel Brothers Construction Co., Inc. and Mr. Roger DiMartino of DiMartino Construction, Inc., were recorded as follows in the Minutes of the Public Hearing:

Mr. Vasel stated he does not believe this amendment is going to accomplish what the Council wants, instead of driving by two homes his trucks will have to go by thirty-one homes, it does not make any sense at all. He has three dumps weighing about 6,000 lbs and it is crazy to send them all the way down Dividend Road past all of these homes, when he is just several hundred feet from the intersection.

Mr. Roger DiMartino, 50 Dividend Road stated Mr. Vasel pretty much summed it up, it is really ridiculous for him to go all the way down Dividend Road to Old Forge Road pas[t] all the homes and businesses when he is only a couple of hundred feet away from the intersection with Main Street. It is ridiculous to send him south pas[t] 30 houses rather than turning north and going past eight houses, which are all on one side of the road, the other side is a cemetery.

Id., p. 2 (Trial Exhibit #23). Once the public hearing had ended and several other speakers had spoken in opposition to the proposed amendment, Mayor Guerrera announced his personal opposition to it as follows: "[W]hen this ordinance was adopted it was done . . . out of concern for the safety of the residents in the area first and foremost . . . [W]hat we are doing is re-routing truck traffic toward the area [we] intended on protecting . . ." Minutes of Town Council Meeting (Trial Exhibit #23), p. 1. Council Member Pawlich then moved that no action be taken on the proposed amendment, and his motion passed unanimously, leaving the Ordinance as it is today.

Challenged Ordinance — Effects Upon the Plaintiffs as Claimed and Proved

45. The effect of the Dividend Road Ordinance on plaintiffs JV III and C. White Son was to prohibit them from routing their large commercial vehicles to and from job sites, oil terminals and/or customers to the north of Rocky Hill by the shortest available routes, thereby causing them to incur greater expenses for fuel, tires and vehicle maintenance after the Ordinance became effective than before. Prior to the adoption of the Ordinance, to reiterate, each plaintiff had routinely routed commercial vehicles between its principal place of business and its job sites, oil terminals and/or customers to the north of Rocky Hill over the northern segment of Dividend Road, extending north from its nearest point of access to Dividend Road to the intersection of Dividend Road and Main Street, just south of the Wethersfield town line and the start of the Silas Deane Highway. Upon the adoption of the Ordinance, however, the plaintiffs were required to route their vehicles to Wethersfield, the Silas Deane Highway and points north by sending them south along Dividend Road to its intersection with Old Forge Road, west along Old Forge Road to its intersection with Main Street, then finally north along Main Street, past its intersection with Dividend Road, to the Wethersfield town line. The parties have stipulated that such rerouting of the plaintiffs' northbound vehicles has added 3.2 miles per round trip for each JV III vehicle and 3.0 miles per round trip for each C. White Son vehicle since the Ordinance first went into effect.

46. By extrapolating from data collected in a single, assertedly average month in the year 2000, before the Ordinance first became effective, C. White Son made claims for the recovery the following additional costs which they claim to have incurred based on extra miles driven and annualized fuel, tire and repair costs for their business from December 1, 2000 through March 31, 2004:

a. For the period from December 1, 2000 through December 31, 2000:

i. Additional fuel costs of $360.31.

ii. Additional tire wear and tear of $799.93

iii. Additional repair costs of $1,796.07.

b. For the year 2001:

i. Additional fuel costs of $3,433.35.

ii. Additional tire wear and tear of $799.93

iii. Additional repair costs of $1,796.07

c. For the year 2002:

i. Additional fuel costs of $3,774.53.

ii. Additional tire wear and tear of $825.85

iii. Additional repair costs of $1,803.38.

d. For the year 2003:

i. Additional fuel costs of $4,361.20.

ii. Additional tire wear and tear of $852.46.

iii. Additional repair costs of $2,049.19.

e. For the period from January 1, 2004 through March 31, 2004:

i. Additional mileage costs of $750.52.

ii. Additional tire wear and tear of $83.62.

iii. Additional repair costs of $282.20.

f. Aggregate losses claimed from December 1, 2000 through March 31, 2004:

i. For additional fuel costs of $12,679.9.

ii. For additional tire wear and tear of $2,615.91.

iii. For additional repair costs of $6,085.52

47. The Court finds that plaintiff C. White Son has provided a reasonable estimate of additional miles traveled to comply with the Ordinance in the above-specified time periods, and on that basis a reasonable estimate of its extra expenses for fuel and tires, which expenses are reasonably and logically related to total miles traveled. The Court is unable to find, however, that its estimates for additional repair costs in that period is anything more than sheer speculation. Despite incurring the foregoing additional costs for fuel and tires to comply with the Ordinance, C. White Son remains a going concern whose business volume and future business prospects have not been diminished. The Court has no basis upon which to find that the value of its business or any of its real or business property has been reduced, much less reduced to zero, by any of its proven losses.

48. The total additional fuel cost to JV III from December 1, 2000 through May 23, 2004 was $7,405.74, broken down as follows:

a. For the period from December 1, 2000 through December 31, 2000: $210.00.

b. For the year 2001: $2,350.58.

c. For the year 2002: $1,990.19.

d. For the year 2003: $2,145.72.

e. For the period from January 1, 2004 through March 31, 2004: $724.07.

49. Despite incurring the foregoing additional costs for fuel to comply with the Ordinance, JV III remains a going concern whose business volume and future business prospects have not been diminished by its obligation to comply with the Ordinance. The Court has no basis upon which to find that the value of its business or any of its real or business property has been reduced, much less reduced to zero, by any of its proven losses.

50. The Ordinance exempts commercial vehicles which have points of origin along Dividend Road north of Oak Hill Road, granting to them significant savings in time and expense denied the plaintiffs and other businesses located on or near Dividend Road south of Oak Hill Road. Three businesses located on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road operate commercial vehicles that meet the definition of "truck" under the Ordinance. They are: DiMartino Construction, Inc., Vasel Brothers Construction Co., Inc. and Super HV, LLC. Enforcement of the Ordinance against the plaintiffs but not the three exempted businesses has not put either plaintiff at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis any such exempted business in any way or at any time.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW: I. PLAINTIFFS' CLAIMS UNDER GENERAL STATUTES § 14-298, AS PLEADED IN COUNT ONE

In the First Count of the plaintiffs' Third Amended Complaint ("Complaint"), which has been operative in this case since September 22, 2003, the plaintiffs claim that the Dividend Road Truck Ordinance was unlawfully adopted, in alleged violation of General Statutes § 14-298, because it effectively regulates "through truck traffic" in the defendant Town without the approval of the State Traffic Commission ("STC"). The essential basis for that claim, upon which the plaintiffs seek orders from this Court declaring the Ordinance null and void and permanently enjoining the Town from enforcing it, is as follows: first, that "through trucks," described in the Complaint as "commercial vehicles with points of origin outside of the Town, and destinations outside of the Town, utilize Dividend Road while traversing through the Town[;]" Complaint, Count I, ¶ 9; second, that the Ordinance regulates "through truck traffic" on Dividend Road because, by its terms, it clearly prohibits all trucks of the size and description specified in it from operating on the restricted northern section of the Road unless, unlike "through trucks," they have "a point of origin from or destination on said section of [the] Road[;]" id., ¶ 5; and third, that enforcement of the Ordinance adversely affects the plaintiffs by preventing them, at significant cost to their businesses, from routing commercial vehicles subject to the Ordinance over the restricted section of the Road when traveling to and from their commercial facilities which are located just south of the restricted section, on or near Dividend Road, in the defendant Town.

The defendant has answered the foregoing allegations, inter alia, by denying that any "through trucks" utilize Dividend Road while "traversing through the Town;" Answer and Special Defenses to Third Amended Complaint ("Answer"), p. 2; and leaving the defendants to their proof as to their claim that enforcement of the Ordinance has adversely affected them in the manner alleged. Id. In addition, it has pleaded, as its First Special Defense, that "[t]he plaintiffs lack standing to allege, as they do in the First Count . . ., that the Rocky Hill ordinance in question has the effect of regulating through truck traffic in violation of [General Statutes] § 14-298, since the plaintiffs do not operate through truck traffic in the Town of Rocky Hill." Answer, p. 5. The plaintiffs have denied the defendant's First Special Defense in their Reply to Special Defenses dated June 2, 2004 ("Reply (6/2/04)").

Turning first to the defendant's argument that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the Ordinance under Section 14-298, the Court must be guided by the following legal principles:

"In order for a party to have standing to invoke the jurisdiction of the court, that party must be aggrieved. Standing is the legal right to set judicial machinery in motion. One cannot rightfully invoke the jurisdiction of the court unless [one] has, in an individual or representative capacity, some real interest in the cause of action . . . Standing is established by showing that the party claiming it is authorized by statute to bring suit [in other words, statutorily aggrieved] or is classically aggrieved . . . The fundamental test for determining [classical] aggrievement encompasses a well-settled twofold determination: first, the party claiming aggrievement must successfully demonstrate a specific personal and legal interest in the subject matter of the [challenged action], as distinguished from a general interest, such as is the concern of all the members of the community as a whole. Second, the party claiming aggrievement must successfully establish that the specific personal and legal interest has been specially and injuriously affected by the [challenged action]." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) [ In re Shawn S., 262 Conn. 155,] 164-65 [, 810 A.2d 799 (2002)].

Edgewood Village, Inc. v. Housing Authority, 265 Conn. 280, 288, 828 A.2d 52 (2003). There cannot, in other words, be legal standing without "a logical nexus between the injury and the claim sought to be adjudicated." Maloney v. Pac, 183 Conn. 313, 322, 439 A.2d 349 (1981) (citing Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968)).

Here, asserts the defendant, the plaintiffs lack standing to prosecute their claim that the challenged Ordinance was adopted in violation of Section 14-298 because they have no direct and personal interest in the enforcement of the statute that was or could have been injuriously affected by the Town's alleged violation of it. The defendant argues, in particular, that the plaintiffs lack standing to prosecute their statutory claim because, as businesses that do not operate through trucks in Rocky Hill, they assertedly have no specific personal and legal interest that was or could have been specially and injuriously affected by the Town's violation of a statute, the sole relevant purpose of which is to prevent individual towns from unilaterally regulating through truck traffic within them. To evaluate this claim, the Court must first examine the purposes of Section 14-298 and identify the interests it seeks to protect:

To begin with, the parties agree that Section 14-298 reserves to the State, through the STC, "the ultimate authority to regulate through truck traffic in Connecticut." Manchester Sand Gravel Co. v. South Windsor, 203 Conn. 267, 273, 524 A.2d 621 (1987). Manifestly, the scope of such authority is limited, for it extends only to "through truck traffic," not all "truck traffic," or "traffic" generally. C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, 181 Conn. at 124. The parties further agree, as our Supreme Court has long held, that the term "through truck traffic," as used in the statute and its predecessors, refers to "trucks which travel from a point outside the limits of a city, town or borough in this state, through such city, town or borough without any scheduled stop in the locality in question." Manchester Sand Gravel Co. v. South Windsor, supra, 203 Conn. at 270 n. 4 (citing C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, 181 Conn. at 121-22 n. 5 and 30 Reports Opinions of the Attorney General (1957), p. 68.) See also Darien v. Stamford, 135 Conn. 71, 72, 60 A.2d 764 (1945). Necessarily excluded from this definition are all trucks traveling within the towns from which they originated, traveling through towns in which they have at least one scheduled stop, or traveling within the towns in which their final destinations lie.

In light of the foregoing, the "through truck" provisions of the statute are understood to have two related purposes. First, by requiring individual towns to cooperate with one another as to the movement of through truck traffic between them, under the ultimate authority of the STC, they are intended to prevent individual towns from burdening each other with the sort of unnecessary expense and disruption that would otherwise arise from uncoordinated, purely local decision making on this issue. Second, in so doing, they are intended to establish an efficient, well coordinated system for the movement of through truck traffic on suitable, reasonably accessible roads and highways throughout the State. See, Manchester Sand Gravel Co. v. South Windsor, supra, 203 Conn. at 276 ("The apparent intention of the legislature, as evidenced by the legislative history of the relevant provision of General Statutes 14-298 . . . was to facilitate a harmonious routing of truck traffic through the various towns of this state in accord with rules and regulations made and adopted by the state traffic commission in cooperation with local traffic authorities . . . Otherwise, uncoordinated local ordinances which have the effect of prohibiting through truck traffic on certain streets, whether by imposing a locally determined weight limit or some other locally determined standard, would conflict with and totally frustrate the legislative intent."). Accord, C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, 181 Conn. at 125 n. 5 ("acknowledging the legislature's desire," in passing the statute, "to prevent the balkanization of through truck traffic routes that would result if each town could determine those routes.").

Against this background, the through truck provisions of Section 14-298 clearly protect two discrete sets of interests. First, they protect the interests of individual towns in avoiding the unnecessary costs, disruption and confusion they would otherwise be burdened with if neighboring towns could regulate through truck traffic passing through them however they saw fit. Second, they protect the interests of persons operating through trucks in this State in having unimpeded access to suitable routes for the efficient movement of such trucks throughout the State. Naturally, any party with such a special and personal interest in the enforcement of the statute, who suffers damage to that interest due to a town's unilateral adoption of an ordinance regulating through truck traffic without STC approval, has standing to prosecute a claim for alleged violation of Section 14-298. See, e.g., Darien v. Stamford, supra, 135 Conn. at 72 (holding that the Town of Darien had standing to challenge the neighboring Town of Stamford's ultra vires adoption of an ordinance regulating though truck traffic traveling through it because Stamford's unlawful action, which restricted through trucks to an inappropriate roadway, had unnecessarily burdened Darien with substantial financial loss and damage). See also, Manchester Sand Gravel Co. v. South Windsor, supra, 203 Conn. 267 (wherein the plaintiff company, which operated through trucks on commercial trips back and forth through a neighboring town in which it had no scheduled stops, prevailed on its claim, to which no standing challenge was made, that the defendant town had unlawfully adopted an ordinance regulating through truck traffic, in violation of Section 14-298).

Unlike the owners and operators of through trucks, whose specific and personal legal interests in the enforcement of Section 14-298 are well established as aforesaid, the owners and operators of other vehicles have no protected interest in the enforcement of that statute because they and their vehicles are not affected by it. Even, then, when enforcement of an ordinance passed in violation of Section 14-298 is otherwise harmful to the owner or operator of such a vehicle, he has no standing to challenge the ordinance for alleged violation of the statute because he has no "specific personal and legal interest" that was or could have been "specially and injuriously affected by" the statutory violation. Otherwise stated, such a person has no standing to claim that the ordinance is invalid for alleged violation of the statute because there is no logical nexus between the harm he complains of and the alleged violation.

The plaintiffs oppose the defendant's claim that they have no standing to prosecute their First Count in two ways. First, they argue, on page 76 of their Post-Trial Brief, that they do in fact operate "through trucks," and thus that they are entitled to the full protection of Section 14-298. Second, they claim that even if they do not operate through trucks, they have suffered such substantial financial injury due to the enforcement of the Ordinance against them that they are classically aggrieved by the unlawful adoption of the Ordinance.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the defendant is correct in its assertion that, on this record, none of the plaintiffs' trucks has ever been operated as a through truck within the Town of Rocky Hill. This is so, the defendant rightly notes, because the points of origin and/or final destinations of such vehicles are always in that Town. It must be remembered that the central basis for the plaintiffs' claims of aggrievement and for damages in this case is that the challenged Ordinance has caused them to incur substantial additional costs to operate their trucks between their commercial facilities on or near Dividend Road and their respective job sites, vendors and customers to the north of Rocky Hill. Hence, while such trucks are surely operated as through trucks whenever they leave Rocky Hill and travel through other towns in which they have no scheduled stops, they do not acquire that special status until they leave their town of origin and lose it as soon as they return to the town as their final destination. Accordingly, the plaintiffs have not established that they ever operated through trucks in Rocky Hill, and thus they have no special personal and legal interest in the enforcement of Section 14-298 within that Town.

As for the plaintiffs' final basis for asserting that they have standing to prosecute their claim that the challenged Ordinance was adopted in violation of Section 14-298 — that enforcement of that Ordinance has caused them and will continue to cause them great financial harm — that assertion must also be rejected. If the mere suffering of harm, as a direct or derivative result of others' wrongdoing, were sufficient to give a party standing to sue, there would be no practical limit to the number of potential claimants who might conceivably come before the Court seeking damages or other redress based upon such wrongdoing. If that were the case, our Courts would soon be swamped by a rising tide of lawsuits from opportunistic litigants with only remote or derivative claims, the underlying controversies giving rise to such lawsuits would never be finally resolved, and scarce personal and insurance resources would be depleted in the defense of such lawsuits and the payment of judgments or settlements to persons not directly affected by the wrongdoing, to the ultimate detriment both of these who suffered direct injuries at the hands of the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer himself. Such claims are properly rejected because the derivative injuries on which they are based, even if causally traceable to the original wrongdoing, were not suffered as a result have not resulted from the defendant's violation of the plaintiff's specific personal and legal rights. See Ganim v. Smith Wesson Corp., 258 Conn. 313, 373, 780 A.2d 98 (2001) (rejecting "but for causation" of alleged injury as a basis for establishing standing to bring a CUTPA claim where the plaintiffs could not establish that the harms they complained of had been suffered by them in their statutorily protected capacities as consumers, competitors or persons with other commercial or business relationships with the defendants). Where, then, a person claims that he has suffered an injury due to the wrongdoing of another, his right to bring suit on the basis of such wrongdoing depends upon whether there is a logical nexus between alleged wrongdoing and the harm he claims to have suffered.

Applying that logic to the plaintiffs' claim under Section 14-298, it is immediately apparent that they have no standing to prosecute that claim because the injuries they complain of have not been suffered by them in any statutorily protected capacity. Like the derivative CUTPA claims discussed in Ganim, that claim must therefore be dismissed.

Having determined that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over the claim presented in the plaintiffs' First Count, the Court is not empowered, much less bound, to decide the merits of that claim. Even so, because that claim was fully litigated before it and the plaintiffs may choose to appeal its dismissal of that claim for lack of standing, the Court will briefly state as follows the legal conclusions it would have made had it reached the merits of that claim.

There is one essential reason why the plaintiffs' statutory claim would have failed on its merits. Simply stated, no credible evidence has been presented from any source that through trucks utilize Dividend Road to travel through the Town of Rocky Hill. Instead, the evidence is overwhelming that the only logical route by which a through truck would traverse Rocky Hill from north to south or south to north is along Main Street (Route 99), not Dividend Road. Main Street is a four-lane State road that continues south into Cromwell and north into Wethersfield, where it remains a State road. Dividend Road, by contrast, is a windy, hilly, two-lane Town road. The trip going south along Main Street, from its intersection and Dividend Road to its intersection with Old Forge Road, is much shorter and faster, and surely more cost-efficient for a through truck, than the alternative trip between those intersections, going south on Dividend Road to Old Forge Road, then west on Old Forge back to Main Street. It is hard to believe that any rational trucker would ever consider using Dividend Road unless Main Street were closed and he had no other choice.

It is true, of course, as many witnesses have testified, that both the plaintiffs' and many others' trucks routinely use Dividend Road. Many of those trucks, moreover, are from out-of town businesses whose drivers make stops at the plaintiffs' businesses or the Citgo fuel terminal, which are all located on the unrestricted southern section of Dividend Road. These trucks, however, are not through trucks, within the meaning of Section 14-298, for they make at least one scheduled stop in the Town of Rocky Hill. Again, there is simply no credible evidence that, or logical reason why, through trucks with no scheduled stops on Dividend Road would take that route instead of using Main Street when traversing Rocky Hill. Because Dividend Road is not a conduit for through trucks passing through the Town, the challenged Ordinance was not adopted unlawfully in violation of Section 14-298. See, e.g., C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, 181 Conn. at 124-25 (citing Adley Express Co. v. Darien, 125 Conn. 501, 7 A.2d 446 [(1939)], and Darien v. Stamford, supra, 135 Conn. 71).

In sum, since the legal violation here complained of, involving the alleged violation of a statute designed to protect the interests of others, is the only basis for the plaintiffs' present claim of injury, the plaintiffs lack standing to prosecute that claim before this Court. Even, however, if they did have standing to present that claim, it would fail on its merits for the reasons indicated above. The Court hereby finds that the claim presented in the First Count of the plaintiffs' Complaint must be dismissed.

II. THE PLAINTIFFS' DUE PROCESS AND EQUAL PROTECTION CLAIMS UNDER THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND 42 U.S.C. § 1983 AS PLEADED IN COUNTS TWO AND THREE A. The Claims

In the Second and Third Counts of their Complaint, the plaintiffs have brought claims against the defendant for money damages and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.³ These claims are based upon allegations that the defendant, by enforcing the challenged Ordinance against them since the date it first became effective, has violated their rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

3 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides in relevant part as follows: "Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress . . ."

In each such Count, the plaintiffs claim initially that by prohibiting them from operating certain large trucks on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, the Ordinance has operated as "a de facto zoning restriction, restricting or prohibiting a pre-existing use [of their property, and thereby] depriving them of property without due process of law." Complaint, Count II, ¶ 15(a); Count III, ¶ 15(a).⁴ They further claim, again in each Count, that by exempting from the aforementioned prohibition all trucks on trips with points of origin on the restricted section of Dividend Road, the Ordinance has denied them equal protection of the laws by "illegally discriminating against the[m] and in favor of the businesses [whose trucks are so exempted;]" id., Count II, ¶ 15(b); Count III, ¶ 15(b); in manner is "arbitrary" and "lacks a rational basis[.]" Id., Count II, ¶ 15(c); Count III, ¶ 15(c).

4 The Town All the allegations of the Second Count federal constitutional claims are repleaded in the Third Count.

The defendant, in its Answer, has simply denied all the essential allegations of these federal constitutional claims. Answer, p. 3.

Notwithstanding the claim made in their Complaint that the challenged Ordinance constitutes a de facto zoning restriction that has deprived them of property without due process of law, the plaintiffs never briefed or argued that claim before this Court. As a result, they have presented the Court with no plausible basis for ruling in their favor on that claim.

Instead, the plaintiffs have limited their reliance upon Due Process analysis to a single paragraph in their opening brief, wherein they invoked the Due Process Clause as a basis for asserting, as they do in their Equal Protection claim, that the arbitrary exercise of governmental power is unconstitutional. Plaintiffs' Trial Brief (9/2/04), p. 55. Because the parties have since argued the plaintiffs' federal constitutional claims as a unitary Equal Protection claim, this Court will so analyze it in conducting its legal analysis.

B. Equal Protection — Essential Requirements to Establish a Claim

At its core, the Equal Protection Clause prohibits the States and all "persons" acting under color of State law, including municipalities; Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 689, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978); from treating similarly situated persons differently. Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 439 (1985). Hence any person claiming that his right to equal protection has been violated by government conduct — here, the enforcement of the challenged Ordinance — must show, as a threshold matter, that the challenged conduct treats similarly situated persons differently. State v. Angel C., 245 Conn. 93, 125-26, 715 A.2d 652 (1998). Here, claim that plaintiffs, there is no dispute that the Ordinance treats them differently, by design and by effect, than other similarly situated persons, to wit: other businesses using trucks in their commercial operations which are located on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road.

Whether a proven difference in the treatment of similarly situated persons passes constitutional muster under the Equal Protection Clause must be determined by scrutinizing the law or practice that results in such different treatment under a standard whose criteria depend upon the nature of the activity impacted by it and the common characteristics, if any, of the persons who engage in that activity. Hence, our Supreme Court has observed that,

When a statute is challenged on equal protection grounds, whether under the United States constitution or the Connecticut constitution, the reviewing court must first determine the standard by which the challenged statute's constitutional validity will be determined. If, in distinguishing between classes, the statute either intrudes on the exercise of a fundamental right or burdens a suspect class of persons, the court will apply a strict scrutiny standard wherein the state must demonstrate that the challenged statute is necessary to the achievement of a compelling state interest . . . If the statute does not touch upon either a fundamental right or a suspect class, its classification need only be rationally related to some legitimate government purpose in order to withstand an equal protection challenge.

Barton v. Ducci Electrical Contractors, Inc., 248 Conn. 793, 813-14, 730 A.2d 1149 (1999). (Internal quotations and citations omitted.)

In this case, the parties agree that the plaintiffs are not members of any constitutionally suspect class. The plaintiffs claim, however, that the challenged Ordinance must be examined under the strict scrutiny standard because it allegedly intrudes upon the exercise of their fundamental constitutional rights to intrastate and interstate travel. See Bruno v. Civil Service Commission, 192 Conn. 335, 347, 472 A.2d 328 (1984) (recognizing that the right to intrastate travel, no less than the right to interstate travel, is a fundamental federal constitutional right, and determining that strict scrutiny must be used to evaluate the constitutionality of a challenged law or practice that differentially affects persons engaged in the exercise of that fundamental right).

In support of this claim, which they did not make in their Complaint, the plaintiffs rely upon a single intermediate appellate decision from Ohio in which strict scrutiny was indeed applied to evaluate the constitutionality of a local ordinance that prohibited all trucks weighing over 20,000 pounds from operating in South Lebanon, Ohio unless they were delivering goods or services to a business or residence in that town. See Ambugy v. Village of South Lebanon, 2002 WL 1009381 (Ohio App., 12 Dist. 2002). The Court there concluded that the challenged ordinance unduly burdened the plaintiff's right to intrastate travel, which the Supreme Court of Ohio had recently held to be a fundamental, by absolutely preventing him from entering South Lebanon in a truck weighing over 20,000 pounds, much less traveling through it to other places in the State.

In this case, by contrast, the challenged Ordinance merely regulates large truck traffic on a small section of an internal Town street, which through trucks have not been shown to utilize when they travel, without stopping, through the Town. Such trucks are obviously not impeded by the Ordinance when they traverse the Town on Main Street, which roughly parallels and twice intersects with the longer route of which the restricted section of Dividend Road is a part. As for the plaintiffs, moreover, and other businesses that do not operate through trucks in Town because their trucks either originate there, make scheduled stops there, or have their final destinations there, the Ordinance leaves open to them the same reasonable and practical alternative route through the Town, along Main Street, as is open to through truckers, as well as full access to all available through truck routes leading out of town and, of course, out of state. Therefore, because the Ordinance does not impact the plaintiffs in the exercise of their rights to intrastate or interstate travel, its constitutionality need not be evaluated under the strict scrutiny standard.

When evaluating a statute challenged on Equal Protection grounds under the rational basis standard, a court must decide whether the classification and disparate treatment inherent in it bear a rational relationship to a legitimate State end and are based on reasons related to the accomplishment of that goal. Donahue v. Town of Southington, 259 Conn. 783, 795, 792 A.2d 76 (2002). "In general," declared the Donahue Court,

the Equal Protection Clause is satisfied so long as there is a plausible policy reason for the classification, see United States Railroad Retirement [Board] v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 174, 179 [ 101 S.Ct. 453, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980), reh. denied, 450 U.S. 960, 101 S.Ct. 1421, 67 L.Ed.2d 385 (1981)], the legislative facts on which the classification is apparently based rationally may have been considered to be true by the government decisionmaker, see Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U.S. 456, 464 [ 101 S.Ct. 715, 66 L.Ed.2d 659, reh. denied, 450 U.S. 1027, 101 S.Ct. 1735, 68 L.Ed.2d 222 (1981)], and the relationship of the classification to its goal is not so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational, see Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., [ 473 U.S. 432, 446, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985)]. Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 11, 112 S.Ct. 2326, 120 L.Ed.2d 1 (1992) . . . Florestal v. Government Employees Ins. Co., [ 236 Conn. 299, 314-15, 673 A.2d 474 (1996)]." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Barton v. Ducci Electrical Contractors, Inc., supra, 248 Conn. 814-15. We emphasize that under this analysis, the legislature is not required to articulate the purpose or rationale for its classification. "The test . . . is whether this court can conceive of a rational basis for sustaining the legislation; we need not have evidence that the legislature actually acted upon that basis."

Id. at 795-96.

Although the foregoing standard is stated in the affirmative, implying that the defendant has the burden of demonstrating the existence of a plausible policy reason for the challenged classification and proving that the relationship between that classification and its goal is not so attenuated as to render the distinction arbitrary or irrational, the opposite is clearly true. That is, the burden of proving a statute — or here, an ordinance — unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause falls squarely on the party challenging it on that basis, who must prove it unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt. Ramos v. Vernon, 254 Conn. 799, 829, 761 A.2d 705 (2000).

To meet their heavy burden, the plaintiffs attack the rational basis of the challenged Ordinance, on three different levels. First, logically focusing on the three reasons most commonly cited by Council Members for supporting the Ordinance — enhancing the safety of local residents, especially children, who walked along or played near the narrow roadway, reducing loud noise from passing trucks at all hours of the day and night, and avoiding damage to the road and nearby buildings caused by vibrations from such trucks — the plaintiffs attack the basis upon which the Council concluded that any of those objectives would be promoted by removing large trucks from the northern section of the Road. Second, they claim that even if there was a rational basis for concluding as aforesaid, the Council had no rational basis for concluding that the goals of the Ordinance would be furthered by applying it only to trucks of the kinds therein specified instead of to all large trucks or other vehicles of comparable weight and dimensions. Third and finally, they claim, as they expressly pleaded in their Complaint, that even if there was a rational basis for applying the Ordinance only to large trucks of the kinds therein specified, the Council had no rational basis for concluding that the goals of the Ordinance could be advanced by any measure by exempting from it all trucks with points of origin on the restricted section of the Road rather than elsewhere.

The plaintiffs' first attack is made in several parts. First, they claim that on the record before the Town Council, there is no evidence that trucks, as opposed to other kinds of vehicles, ever damaged Dividend Road or any house or other building in its environs. Despite third-hand reports of such complaints by local residents, the Council assertedly had no proof that any such damage was ever sustained, much less that it was caused by large trucks of any size or description.

As for alleged problems with noise in the area due to passing trucks, the plaintiffs note that the Council had no evidence that noise complaints were ever made to the Police Department or the Town Zoning Enforcement Officer, who is generally responsible for enforcing the Town's noise regulations. Thus there is no proof that whatever truck noise was heard ever reached a level at which it was unlawful, and no known effort was made to modify the noise regulations to reduce the levels at which noise could permissibly be generated anywhere in the affected area.

As for the overriding issue of public safety, the plaintiffs first observe that if the real problem in the area was the speed, not simply the presence or passage, of large trucks, then less drastic remedies were called for to address the problem than prohibiting large trucks from operating on Dividend Road. If the problem concerned the speed limit itself, it could obviously have been reduced. If the problem concerned enforcement of the speed limit, other steps could have been taken to enforce it more effectively, such as mounting directed patrols in the area for speeders. If, moreover, the foregoing measures did not work, other more permanent measures could have been taken to slow or stop speeders, such as installing more stop signs or traffic control signals along the roadway, or even installing speed bumps. Yet the Police Department had reported no special problems policing or enforcing the speed limit on Dividend Road and never initiated a direct patrol for speeders.

With respect to the narrowness of the roadway and reported perils of playing near or walking alongside it when there were no sidewalks, the plaintiffs suggest that the Council could have voted to install sidewalks to address the problem instead of prohibiting large trucks from operating on the Road. Furthermore, to the extent that pedestrian safety problems would continue to exist if no sidewalks were built, the plaintiffs contend that the passage of the Ordinance would not so much eliminate those problems as transfer them elsewhere, where other residents, including children, would be endangered by and have to cope with increased truck traffic from the restricted area. The plaintiffs fault the Town for not analyzing the probable impact of the Ordinance on such people before it adopted the Ordinance, especially since the alternative route would be longer, would go though residential areas, and would pass near a public school.

In sum, contend the plaintiffs, the Town had a very insubstantial basis upon which to believe that adoption of an Ordinance prohibiting large trucks from operating on the northern section of Dividend Road would promote public safety, reduce disruptive noise from passing trucks and lessen damage to the roadway and nearby buildings caused by vibrations from such trucks.

In response to the foregoing arguments, the Town contends that, especially in light of the strong presumption of constitutionality with which the Ordinance must be viewed, the Town Council certainly had available to it facts that gave it at least a rational basis for concluding that the prohibition of large truck traffic on the northern section of Dividend Road would promote the legitimate goals of enhancing public safety for local residents, especially children, who walked along or played near the Road, reducing loud noise from passing trucks at all hours of the day or night, and avoiding damage to the roadway and nearby buildings caused by vibrations from such trucks. For the following reasons, the Court agrees with the Town.

First, the Town correctly notes that concerns about heavy truck traffic on Dividend Road were of long duration, going back almost thirty years, to the time when the original Forest Street Ordinance was first discussed and adopted. Fire Chief Kochanek so observed at the initial PSC meeting where the proposed Ordinance was discussed, and Council Member Surwilo agreed based upon her thirty-two years as a Town resident and her twelve-year service on Town Planning and Zoning Commission before first was elected to the Council in the early 1990s. Such concerns were not necessarily presented to the Police Department, the Town Building Inspector or the Town Zoning Enforcement Officer in the form of formal complaints about particular incidents that required follow-up investigation for law enforcement purposes. Rather, they were described by residents as recurring daily annoyances and sources of worry of the types that generally detracted from the quality of life in the area, and thus were reported informally to the Town Manager and Members of the Council when they met their constituents or reported directly to individual trucking companies. Hence, the lack of such formal complaints or of related statistics documenting their frequency is hardly surprising or significant.

Large truck traffic in the area was clearly substantial, as Council Member Surwilo had personally observed and several witnesses testified. Although a professional engineering firm did not conduct a traffic study of the area., counting particular numbers of vehicles coming and going along the Road to and from particular places, witnesses established, and the defendants can hardly disagree, that dozens of times each day and night large trucks rolled back and forth over the Road to and from a combination of the plaintiffs' own facilities, the nearby Citgo fuel terminal, and other businesses operating large trucks on the Road. A sizeable percentage of these trucks traversed the northern section of Dividend Road, either coming from or going to Main Street and points north of Rocky Hill.

The evidence also established that such trucks frequently made very loud noises and caused substantial vibration when they passed by. One particularly loud and disturbing type of noise that often disrupted the area came from the application of their J or Jake brakes, with which the Mayor and others were personally familiar. In addition, the trucks banged heavily when rolled along the Road, especially when pulling empty semi-trailers after making their deliveries. Such banging reportedly caused substantial vibration which local residents had to endure on a daily and nightly basis, and to which they reasonably attributed damage done to their homes and to the local roadway, including the bridge on the Road that was then awaiting repair. The report by the Town Manager about his long-standing receipt of complaints about such noise and vibration in the area, coupled with the confirming testimony of witnesses at the public hearing and the familiarity of individual Council Members with such complaints and the conditions that led to them, certainly gave the Council a substantial basis for rationally concluding that the prohibition of large trucks on the northern section of Dividend Road would help significantly to alleviate those problems.

Of greatest concern to residents, however, were threats posed by large trucks to the safety of local pedestrians, especially children who walked along or played near the Road. Complaints of this kind had frequently been repeated, both to the Town Manager, who was motivated by them to have the Preliminary Draft of the Ordinance prepared. Such concerns were raised in early meetings of the PSC to discuss the Preliminary Draft, which three Council Members had attended. They were also raised by members of the public who attended the October 16, 2000 public hearing and by Members of the Council when they spoke in favor of the Ordinance. Fortunately, although the Council had been told of situations in which pedestrians walking along the shoulder of the narrow, two-lane road had felt themselves in peril of being struck by passing trucks or sucked into their strong drafts, there was no evidence before them that a truck of any sort had ever hit a pedestrian in the area. Even so, the Council had at least a rational basis for believing, based upon decades of citizen input, their own experience and recent complaints, that large truck traffic posed a very real threat to pedestrian safety in the area, and that steps to reduce such traffic would lessen that threat.

Turning finally to the plaintiffs' suggestions that other measures should have been taken by the Town Council, or at least considered and rejected by them for appropriate reasons, before prohibiting the operation of large trucks on the restricted section of Dividend Road, it must be remembered that such considerations are irrelevant to an assessment of constitutionality under the rational basis test. Instead, to reiterate, the Court must simply determine if there is a plausible policy reason for adopting the ordinance in light of available legislative information which its framers could reasonably have relied upon, and if so, if the classification used in the ordinance is rationally related to the accomplishment of its apparent goals. The Court need not even know what goals actually motivated the framers of a challenged ordinance to adopt it, and thus certainly need not determine if the framers used the most efficient or least intrusive means of accomplishing those goals.

Against this background, the Council could rationally have concluded that the placement of restrictions on large truck traffic on the largely residential northern section of Dividend Road would contribute materially to all three of the objectives its Members thereby sought to accomplish: reducing loud, disruptive noise in the area; avoiding damage to the roadway and nearby buildings from passing trucks; and enhancing the safety of pedestrians, especially children, in the area.

The plaintiffs next argue that if the Town Council did indeed have a rational basis for concluding that a prohibition of large truck traffic on the northern section of Dividend Road would promote pedestrian safety, noise reduction and avoiding vibration-caused damage to the roadway and nearby buildings in the area, then it had no rational basis for selectively applying the prohibition, as it did, only to "commercial motor vehicle[s] other than public safety, education, municipal purpose vehicles having a gross weight of six thousand (6,000) pounds and/or over and designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property and including a motor vehicle designed and used for the purpose of drawing a semi-trailer, as well as the vehicle drawing the semi-trailer and the semi-trailer." The plaintiffs contend that such substantive limitations upon the scope of the Ordinance were simply and unthinkingly adopted from the pre-existing Forest Street Ordinance, without any basis for how — because, assertedly, there is none — they could rationally have contributed to accomplishing any of the Ordinance's professed purposes.

On this score, the plaintiffs argue first that the fact that a vehicle is "commercial," as opposed to "non-commercial," does not affect its threat to public safety, or the level of noise or vibration that results from its operation. This distinction, they claim, was never discussed by the PSC or the Council. Similarly, the fact that a truck is "designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property," rather than for other purposes, would hardly seem to affect the nature or degree of risk to pedestrians or the level of noise or vibration that results from its operation. This distinction, they claim, was also not discussed by the PSC or the Council.

As for the 6,000-pound weight limit prescribed by the Ordinance, that limit was concededly discussed at the initial meeting of the PSC, where Attorney Heneghan observed that "vehicles greater than that weight are considered to cause noise and damage to the highway[,]" but the scientific or engineering basis for that observation was not reflected in the PSC's minutes, which, in any event, may not have been distributed to all Members of the Council. At the October 16, 2000 Meeting of the Council, moreover, the limit was discussed, but only insofar as it related to the question whether or not individual owners of pickup trucks used for family transportation purposes would be affected by it. Therefore, claim the plaintiffs, apart from the unilluminating fact that that same limit was used in the Forest Street Ordinance, the legislative record was devoid of facts from which the Council might rationally have concluded that such a weight limit was reasonably related to accomplishing any of the goals of the Ordinance.

Finally, as for the exemption in the Ordinance for public safety, education and municipal purpose vehicles, the plaintiffs claim that that exemption bears no rational relationship to achieving the purposes of the Ordinance, and in fact undermines them to the extent that such exempted vehicles, like school buses and dump trucks, are of the same or greater weight and size as the large trucks which the Ordinance otherwise prohibits. A vehicle which, because of its size and description, is so inherently dangerous to pedestrians, loud and disruptive to homeowners or destructive to the roadway or nearby buildings as to warrant its prohibition from all or part of the Town, is hardly less dangerous, loud or destructive when it is owned by a municipality or put to public use.

Though the foregoing arguments are provocative, they are certainly not unanswerable. To begin with, the word "commercial," as used in the Ordinance, is most appropriately understood as part of a single term, "commercial motor vehicle," which now, as in the year 2000, is defined in relevant part as follows in General Statutes § 14-1(13):

"Commercial motor vehicle" means a vehicle designed or used to transport passengers or property[.]

So understood, that term, as used in the Ordinance together with the words, "designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property," to define the term "truck," appears to mean simply that — a non-passenger vehicle such as a truck, not a passenger vehicle such as a van or a bus. Indeed, the term "truck," which did not appear in the Forest Street Ordinance, is now defined in General Statutes § 14-1(90) as "a motor vehicle designed, used or maintained primarily for the transportation of property."

It is true, of course, that the definition of the term "truck," as set forth in the Ordinance, goes beyond the current statutory definition of that term to include within it "a motor vehicle designed and used for the purpose of drawing a semi-trailer, as well as the vehicle drawing the semi-trailer and the semi-trailer." This additional language, however, merely references or includes within it the current statutory definitions for three other types of vehicles which, alone or in combination, are commonly referred to as "trucks," to wit: a semitrailer, which is defined in General Statutes § 14-1(76) to mean any trailer type vehicle designed and used in conjunction with a motor vehicle so that some part of its own weight and load rests on or is carried by another vehicle; a "tractor," which is defined in General Statutes § 14-1(87) to mean "a motor vehicle designed and used for drawing a semitrailer;" and a "tractor-trailer unit," which is defined in General Statutes § 14-1(88) to mean, inter alia, ". . . a combination of a tractor and a semitrailer." It therefore has no effect upon the plaintiffs' challenge to the first two distinctions in the Ordinance for alleged arbitrariness, for those distinctions merely limit the prohibition of the Ordinance to trucks, which it was always designed and intended to be limited to. Thus, there is a rational basis for using those distinctions to describe the substantive scope of the Ordinance.

As for the 6,000 pound weight limit established by the Ordinance for most trucks traveling on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road, the plaintiffs are correct in their assertion that legislative record does not reflect the specific scientific or engineering basis for the Ordinance's distinction between trucks of that weight or greater and other, smaller trucks for the purpose of applying the Ordinance. What is not revealed precisely is why the Council concluded that that is the weight beyond which trucks pose special threats to pedestrian safety, the peace and quiet of local neighborhoods and/or the integrity of local roads or buildings that warrant prohibiting them from what they sought to make a far safer, more tranquil, less rapidly deteriorating residential neighborhood.

Of more than passing interest, however, is the undisputed fact that the original source of that weight limit in the Ordinance is the Forest Street Ordinance, which our Supreme Court upheld in C. White Son, Inc. v. Rocky Hill, supra, 181 Conn. 114. The record makes it clear that, in drafting the challenged Ordinance, Attorney Heneghan closely examined the Forest Street Ordinance and the C. White Son decision, which he carefully explained, then distributed to the PSC. Based upon his review of that decision, Attorney Heneghan unequivocally advised the PSC, at its initial meeting on this issue on June 22, 2000, that "vehicles greater than [6,000 pounds] are considered to cause noise and damage to the highway[.]" The basis for that observation, though not particularized in the minutes of the PSC, is in fact strongly suggested by the C. White Son decision itself. In particular, the decision carefully notes that in 1970, approximately eight years before the Forest Street Ordinance was finally adopted, a study was commissioned concerning how to deal with problems arising from the passage of approximately ninety large trucks per week along Forest Street, which ran between Dividend Road and Main Street in Rocky Hill. Then as now, Forest Street was a two-way, two-lane residential street, about 31.7 feet wide from shoulder to shoulder, that had no sidewalks. Residents on the street had complained to Town officials "because of the trucks' noise, the danger to children and the rattling of houses." Id. at 116. The study concluded that there was no adequate alternative route by which trucks could go back and forth between Dividend Road and Main Street.

Thereafter, the Town constructed Old Forge Road, which linked the southern terminus of Dividend Road directly to Main Street by a divided four-lane roadway specially designed and constructed to carry large truck traffic. Once this new road was opened, the Town passed the Forest Street Ordinance.

In the trial court, C. White Son challenged the Forest Street Ordinance on two grounds. Much like in this case, it claimed initially that adoption of the ordinance violated General Statutes § 14-298 because it regulated through truck traffic without approval by the State Traffic Commission. Alternatively, it claimed that the classification used in the ordinance to determine which types of vehicles to prohibit on Forest Street to accomplish the Town's objectives had no rational basis, and thus was unconstitutional. Both challenges were rejected by the trial court.

"On appeal," the Supreme Court noted, "the plaintiff abandoned its claim at trial that the classification drawn in the ordinance was illegal; the trial court readily found that the classification was rationally related to a legitimate interest of the municipality." Id. at 125 n. 6. By so doing, the plaintiff let stand the final judgment of the trial court that that classification was both rational and constitutional.

Against this background, the C. White Son decision did more than merely uphold the Forest Street Ordinance against a challenge under § 14-298. It also revealed that the Ordinance had been upheld by the trial court over a constitutional challenge that the essential criteria by which it determined which types of trucks to prohibit from operating on Forest Street were rationally related to their goals of promoting safety, reducing noise and avoiding damage from truck vibration along that Street. This information certainly afforded the Council a rational basis for concluding that the same criteria, including the 6,000-pound weight limit established by the Forest Street Ordinance, could and should be used to specify which large trucks should be prohibited from operating on the northern section of Dividend Road in order to accomplish the same objectives, in the face of the same reported problems, on a virtually identical road.

Finally, as to the exemptions for public safety, education and municipal purpose vehicles set forth in the Ordinance, it appears to the Court that those exemptions are largely self-explanatory. As important as it may be to a municipality, in order to promote public safety, preserve quiet residential neighborhoods, and avoid structural damage and disruption to roads and buildings, to limit access to certain of its streets by large trucks, it would be absurd to require it, in pursuing those objectives, to compromise its ability and abandon its statutory responsibility to provide basic municipal services to persons who live on or near those streets by using appropriate public service vehicles. Preserving access to otherwise restricted streets and adjacent areas by such public safety, education and municipal use vehicles, regardless of their weight or other characteristics, is simply essential to preserving the safety of the community and its quality of life. Because, moreover, the public service uses of such vehicles are so unique, and so critically important to the people of the municipality, there is surely a rational basis for distinguishing between them and other vehicles of similar size and description with regard to having access to generally restricted areas.

On the basis of the foregoing observations and analysis, the Court concludes that the Town did indeed have several plausible policy reasons for prohibiting trucks of the size and description listed in the Ordinance from the northern section of Dividend Road.

The Court must therefore turn its attention to the plaintiffs' third and final challenge to the classification set forth in that Ordinance. On that score, to reiterate, the plaintiffs claim that even if the Town did have a rational basis for prohibiting vehicles of the specific types listed in the Ordinance from the northern section of Dividend Road, it had no rational basis exempting from the Ordinance all otherwise prohibited vehicles of identical size and description merely because they originated from or had destinations on that restricted section of the Road.

In this regard, the plaintiffs make several related arguments. First, they argue that if the purpose of the Ordinance is to improve public safety, reduce noise and stop damage to the roadway and nearby buildings by prohibiting large trucks from the northern section of Dividend Road, that purpose is undermined by permitting any trucks of like size and description to continue using that section of the Road. Because a truck's threat to pedestrian safety, neighborhood peace and tranquility and the structural integrity of the roads and buildings is a function of its size and weight, not its point of origin or destination, any distinction resting on the latter basis assertedly does nothing to promote, and in fact undermines, the putative goals of the Ordinance. Here, they continue, the Council had no basis for finding that operators of trucks originating from or with destinations on the restricted section of Dividend Road are better, safer drivers than operators of trucks not originating from or stopping in the restricted section. It also had no basis for finding that such local drivers would likely drive on that section of the Road with greater care or consideration for the safety and tranquility of local residents than non-local operators. In sum, the plaintiffs conclude that, in the absence of any rational basis for concluding that the goals of the Ordinance would be promoted by applying it only to trucks not originating from or having destinations in the restricted section, that distinction, which discriminates against them and in favor of businesses operating trucks from premises within the restricted section, violates their right to equal protection of the laws.

The logic of the foregoing argument is inescapable insofar as it suggests that the Council had no plausible reason for concluding that there was any meaningful distinction between trucks with points of origin within the restricted section of Dividend Road and trucks with points of origin elsewhere with respect to the threat they posed to public safety or their potential to cause undue noise or to damage the Roads and local buildings. Even so, the Court is not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the Council's decision to exempt trucks originating from or with destinations on the restricted section of the Road is so unrelated to accomplishing the goals of the Ordinance as to have no rational basis, or thus to warrant a finding that the Ordinance is unconstitutional.

In fact, the obvious reason why an exemption was granted to trucks on trips originating from or with destinations on the otherwise restricted northern section of Dividend Road was to avoid any claim that the Town had deprived local property owners of property without due process of law. If and to the extent that persons owning property along the northern section of Dividend Road were entitled by the Town's zoning regulations to keep vehicles prohibited by the Ordinance on their own properties — and in fact they were⁵ — enforcement of the Ordinance against them would obviously deprive them of their rights as abutting owners to gain reasonable access from their properties to adjacent roads and highways. Johnson v. Watertown, 131 Conn. 84, 92, 38 A.2d 1 (1944); see generally, 10A McQuillin Municipal Corporations, § 30.63. In so doing, moreover, such a restriction would obviously interfere with such residents' lawful use and enjoyment of their properties, perhaps so substantially as to result in the practical confiscation of such properties, requiring the payment of just compensation. Cohen v. City of Hartford, 244 Conn. 206, 221, 710 A.2d 746 (1992). Therefore, the rational basis for exempting from the Ordinance all otherwise prohibited trucks on trips with points of origin on the restricted section of the Road was to avoid violating certain residents' constitutional rights while engaging in an otherwise well-motivated effort to promote the public good.

5 See Findings of Fact, supra at ¶ 24.

The foregoing analysis, however, cannot end the Court's inquiry. Instead, if exempting local residents from the requirements of a restrictive ordinance is appropriate to protect them from an unconstitutional deprivation of their property without due process of law, the question obviously arises whether establishing a restriction in that area is truly in the broader public interest or instead, just a simple act of local favoritism masquerading as good public policy. Where, in particular, the class of persons exempted from the application of an ordinance is so broad that the ordinance merely operates to discriminate against outsiders without meaningfully promoting the goals it is ostensibly designed to promote, the ordinance is vulnerable to challenge on the ground that its true and only purpose is to favor local interests. See, e.g., Richter Concrete Corporation v. City of Reading, 166 Ohio 279, 142 N.E.2d 525 (1957) (Ohio Supreme Court held that an ordinance restricting trucks in excess of 20,000 pounds from using city roads unless they were destined for the city or leaving from the city violated the Equal Protection Clause); Amburgy v. Village of South Lebanon, supra, 2002 WL 1009381 (overturning prohibition from entire town of all trucks weighing more than 20,000 pounds unless they were delivering goods or services to a business or residence located within the town).

In this case, two Members of the Council who testified that they had different personal understandings at the outset as to whether any businesses operating trucks otherwise subject to the Ordinance would be exempt from its application because they were located on the restricted northern section of Dividend Road. Ms. Surwilo testified that she was then aware that at least two businesses operating such trucks would be exempt from the application of the Ordinance because they were located on Dividend, to the north of Oak Hill Road. She testified that, in light of such knowledge, she supported the Ordinance as a good compromise, for she fully expected it to remove a substantial proportion of the existing large truck traffic from the northern section of Dividend Road. Mr. Pawlich, by contrast, openly admitted that he "goofed" in believing that the southern boundary of the restricted section had been set in such a location that all businesses operating large trucks on Dividend Road would be governed by it. His claim in this regard is well supported by his documented effort to amend the Ordinance in January of 2001 by moving the southern boundary of the restricted section farther north, past all the exempted businesses, to Meyers Drive.

The question presented by the Council's original decision to set the southern boundary of the restricted section at Oak Hill Road, and by its later decision not to move that boundary farther north when it was informed by Mr. Pawlich that not all businesses operating trucks on Dividend Road were covered by the Ordinance, is whether those decisions were rationally related to accomplishing the Ordinance's public safety, noise reduction and property preservation goals. The plaintiffs have argued that those decisions were purely arbitrary acts of favoritism towards trucking businesses located north of Oak Hill Road, for they assertedly did nothing to promote the Council's stated goals. The defendant claims that such decisions, on both occasions, were completely rational, reasonable efforts to optimize the effectiveness of a proper, if imperfect, compromise to promote those salutary goals. This Court concludes, for the following reasons, that on both occasions, those decisions were rationally related to promoting the Council's goals.

The Council was well aware, when it initially approved the Ordinance, of where on Dividend Road reported problems with disruptive, loud and dangerous large truck traffic had been experienced. That area was identified as the residentially zoned section of the Road running north from Oak Hill Road to Main Street, which was located to the north of the Manufacturing zone in which both plaintiffs' facilities and the Citgo fuel terminal were located. From the standpoint of protecting local residents from harm, noise and damage to the roadway and their homes, the Council was appropriately interested in restricting large truck access to that entire section of the Road if they could reasonably do so without depriving local residents of their rights of access to the Road from their properties and to their properties from the Road using vehicles they were permitted to keep on and use from those properties under the Town's Zoning Regulations.

Establishing the southern boundary of the restricted section further north on Dividend Road than Oak Hill Road would certainly have imposed similar financial burdens upon all businesses operating large trucks from properties anywhere on the Road. Had that been done, it would have eliminated any claim that the Ordinance unfairly burdened the plaintiffs in relation to such other businesses.

By establishing the southern boundary of the restricted area farther north along the Road, however, the Council might rationally have concluded that it would not be responding adequately or appropriately to the problem it was attempting to deal with, for two reasons. First, it would obviously have understood that by not placing the southern boundary at Oak Hill Road, it would be keeping the entire stretch of road between Oak Hill and wherever, further north, the southern boundary was placed open to large trucks of all kinds. The Council could rationally have decided not to leave such a long section of the Road completely vulnerable to the harms it was seeking to avoid.

Second, the Council could legitimately have been concerned about the possibility that truckers lawfully but inadvertently heading north past Oak Hill Road, without knowing that they could not leave the area by heading in that direction, would endanger themselves and others, or at least seriously disrupt local traffic, when they finally attempted, in close quarters, to turn around. Questions on this subject had been raised by Mr. Sollmi, the Town Director of Engineering and Highways, when this issue was discussed before the PSC, with three Council Members present. Although Mr. Sollmi had then suggested that the southern boundary of the restricted section be established at the intersection of Dividend and Forest Street, where there was stop sign for northbound traffic, the Council could reasonably have established the southern boundary further north, at Oak Hill Road, both because that was the northern edge of the Manufacturing zone and because trucks originating from or making scheduled stops at any of the large businesses in that zone, including the plaintiffs' businesses and the Citgo fuel terminal, could easily avoid the turning problem altogether by turning left when departing from them and heading south along Dividend towards Old Forge Road.

When, moreover, it was revealed to the entire Council by Mr. Pawlich that a small number of businesses operating large trucks were exempt from the Ordinance, as originally written, because their properties were situated north of Oak Hill Road, the Council heard important new testimony from the owners of those businesses which clearly confirmed the benefits of keeping the southern boundary of the restricted area exactly where it was instead of moving it farther north to Meyers Drive. The essence of what these exempted business owners told the Council at the public hearing before the January 16, 2001 Council Meeting was that their businesses were located so much closer to the northern terminus of Dividend Road, where it intersected with Main Street, than to its southern terminus, where it intersected with Old Forge Road, that requiring them to operate their trucks to leave the area to the south would actually cause them to travel past many more homes than they would pass if they kept going north. One such owner, Mr. Henry Vasel, noted that a change in the Ordinance would cause him to drive his three 6,000-pound dump trucks past thirty-one houses instead of only two, as he did under the existing Ordinance. Roger DiMartino observed, in similar fashion, that a change in the Ordinance would be "ridiculous," for it would cause him to drive his trucks past thirty houses instead of only eight, as he then did to exit the area by driving north to the corner of Dividend Road and Main Street.

Obviously agreeing with Mr. DiMartino's assessment, Mayor Guerrera opened the discussion of the proposed amendment at the Council Meeting following the public hearing by announcing that he would oppose it because it seemed to be re-routing truck traffic toward the very area that the Council originally was trying to protect. Immediately thereafter, without further debate or discussion, Mr. Pawlich moved that no action be taken on his proposed amendment to the Ordinance, and that motion was adopted unanimously.

Against this background, the Town Council had at least four rational bases for concluding that setting the southern boundary of the restricted northern section of Dividend Road at Oak Hill Road would optimize the effectiveness of the Ordinance in accomplishing its objectives. First, as previously noted, it would obviously maximize the length of the restricted section, achieving maximum protective benefits for the largest number of local residents by reasonable means. Second, by setting the southern boundary at a point just north of plaintiff JV III's facility, at the corner of Dividend and Oak Hill Road, it would encourage trucks originating from or making scheduled stops at that facility and the other large facilities in the Manufacturing zone to leave the area simply by turning out of those facilities to the left and heading south to Old Forge Road instead of meandering north into tight places where it might prove difficult and dangerous to turn around once they discovered that they could not continue further north. Third, the effect of the Ordinance, with only a handful of exempted businesses located in the restricted area, was not to "favor" so many businesses in the restricted section as not meaningfully to reduce large truck traffic in that section, thus gratuitously harming the interests of outside businesses. Fourth and finally, because of the proximity of the exempted businesses to the northern terminus of the restricted section, the Ordinance actually optimized the benefits of the prohibition 2 for local residents by not requiring trucks from these businesses to travel past more homes to leave the area to the south. The plaintiffs have not come close to establishing that the Town Council's use of that classification was arbitrary or irrational, or thus that the Ordinance is unconstitutional, beyond a reasonable doubt.

For all of these reasons, judgment must enter for the defendant on the Second and Third Counts of the plaintiffs' Complaint.

III. THE PLAINTIFFS' DUE PROCESS AND EQUAL PROTECTION CLAIMS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF CONNECTICUT, AS PLEADED IN COUNTS FOUR AND SIX

In the Fourth Count of their Complaint, the plaintiff's claim, in language identical to that appearing in their Second and Third Counts, that the Challenged Ordinance violates their rights under the Constitution of Connecticut to due process of law and equal protection of the laws. Because the plaintiffs have provided the Court with no separate, independent analysis of their rights to due process and equal protection under the State Constitution then under its federal counterpart — claiming, to the contrary, that such rights are identical to their federal counterparts, and thus briefing them together — the Court hereby rejects the plaintiffs' State constitutional claims for the same reasons it previously rejected their parallel federal claims.

For identical reasons, the Court also rejects the plaintiffs' other State Equal Protection claim, which they separately pleaded in their Sixth Count but did not brief or argue except as part of their unified State and federal constitutional claim. Accordingly, judgment must enter for the defendant on the Fourth and Sixth Counts of the plaintiffs' Complaint.

IV. THE PLAINTIFFS' "TAKING" CLAIMS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF CONNECTICUT, AS PLEADED IN COUNT FIVE

In the Fifth Count of their Complaint, the plaintiffs have pleaded that the defendant, by enforcing the challenged Ordinance against them, has taken their property for public use without just compensation, in alleged violation of Article I, Section 11 of the Constitution of Connecticut. This separate claim, which the plaintiffs barely briefed at all, is based upon the theory that the enforcement of the Ordinance against them has so deprived them of the use and enjoyment of their respective properties as to deprive them of their economic value and, in effect, to confiscate them.

On the record before this Court, however, the plaintiffs have fallen far short of proving this claim. Each plaintiff is clearly a going concern, just as it was before the Ordinance first took effect. Each still operates trucks from its commercial facility on or near Dividend Road, serving clients and customers all over this State and region. Neither plaintiff produced any evidence tending to show that the fair market value of its property had been diminished at all by the enforcement of the Ordinance, much less reduced to zero, and so practically confiscated. In other words, neither plaintiff has made any showing at all that its property has been "taken for public use," with or without just compensation.

Accordingly, that claim must likewise be rejected, and judgment must enter for the defendant on the Fifth Count of the plaintiffs' Complaint.

CONCLUSION

On the basis of the foregoing findings of fact and conclusions of law, the Court hereby enters judgment for the defendant Town of Rocky Hill on all six counts of the plaintiffs' Complaint.

IT IS SO ORDERED.