Opinion
No. NNHCV095027022S
November 8, 2011
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE MOTION TO ENFORCE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
This personal injury premises liability case had been set for jury selection on September 7, 2011. On September 6, 2011, however, the court, Blue, J., heard argument on the defendant's motion for summary judgment. On September 7, therefore, when the parties appeared for assignment to a judge for jury selection, the undersigned agreed to continue the commencement of jury selection until January of 2012, both to allow Judge Blue to render a decision on the summary judgment motion and also to give the plaintiff an additional opportunity to consider the defendant's $45,000 settlement offer.
On September 13, 2011, Judge Blue filed a one-page memorandum of decision granting the motion for summary judgment. On September 14, the plaintiff filed a withdrawal of action and forwarded a release to counsel for the defendant, having also left a voice mail message with the defendant's counsel, who was out of state at the time, indicating that plaintiff was accepting the defendant's earlier offer of $45,000, an offer which had never been specifically withdrawn and which the defendant had indicated would be kept open until the second day of jury selection, if necessary.
The withdrawal, although dated September 14, actually appears ahead of Judge Blue's decision, which is dated September 13, in the court's list of docket entries, probably because it was e-filed, whereas Judge Blue's decision was typed, hand-signed, and paper-filed in the clerk's office for subsequent scanning and entry into the electronic file. Thus, the plaintiff does not contend that he actually accepted the offer before the decision was rendered. Plaintiff's counsel represents, however, that he was unaware that Judge Blue had rendered the decision granting summary judgment until after he had filed the withdrawal and notified counsel that he had accepted the offer, and defendant does not contest that representation. The parties also agree that Judge Blue's order was not actually seen by the parties until September 15, 2011, at which time both parties became aware of the decision for the first time.
The Plaintiff now moves for an order enforcing what he contends was an unambiguous settlement agreement between the two parties. He argues that the offer of $45,000 was never withdrawn, that it had been (despite several previous rejections by the plaintiff) specifically left open by the defendant, and that from the perspective of the parties, at least, the case was still pending when the offer was accepted, so that the settlement was entered into in good faith in order to avoid an impending trial. He cites well-established case law, beginning with Audubon Parking Associates Ltd. Partnership v. Barclay Stubbs, Inc., 225 Conn. 804 (1993), and including many decisions of the undersigned interpreting that case, in support of the proposition than an unambiguous settlement freely entered into by the parties in order to resolve a dispute and avoid an impending trial, whether such agreement is oral or written, is subject to summary enforcement by the court.
"Once reached, a settlement agreement cannot be repudiated by either party. Whether the parties in fact concluded a settlement agreement is determined by "the intention of the parties manifested by their words and acts." Hess v. Dumouchel Paper Co., 154 Conn. 343, 347 (1966). The intention of the parties is a question of fact and when that is ascertained it is conclusive. Ballard v. Asset Recovery Management Co., 39 Conn.App. 805, 809 (1995).
The defendant argues against enforcement of the settlement agreement on the grounds that the right of the plaintiff to accept the settlement offer was terminated the one day Judge Blue granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. Plaintiff replies that the present case remains capable of settlement because, following the denial of his motion to reargue, he has appealed Judge Blue's decision. Thus, he claims, a viable appellate issue remains to be resolved, and with the case thus still pending, and no withdrawal of the offer having occurred, the Plaintiff was free to accept it, as he did.
The defendant essentially contends that there was no "meeting of the minds," the prerequisite for a valid agreement, at the time of the purported acceptance. The $45,000 offer was held open while the case was still "alive" and subject to jury selection, but once summary judgment was granted, it argues, an entirely new situation was created, effectively vitiating the defendant's offer. Although the case may yet be "pending," in the sense that the plaintiff has filed an appeal of the judgment, the circumstances are quite different from those that prompted the defendant's offer in the first instance.
Plaintiff appears to concede, although perhaps not in so many words, that if he had accepted the offer after learning of Judge Blue's decision but before the defendant learned of it, there would not have been the requisite meeting of the minds, as each side would have been basing its decision on an entirely different premise: the plaintiff, on the recognition that the jig was up, and that he should grab what he could; and the defendant, on the notion that the case was still alive and with jury selection scheduled for January. Instead, he argues that he accepted the offer under circumstances such that both sides were operating under exactly the same set of assumptions: that the case was still pending, that Judge Blue had heard, but had not yet decided, the motion for summary judgment; and that, the offer having specifically been left open, it was subject to acceptance at any time before either the second day of jury selection, or some material change in circumstances of which both parties were mutually aware.
Although sympathetic to plaintiff's plight, and even more so to that of the plaintiff's attorney, who had done all that he could to urge his client to accept a favorable settlement offer at a time when there was no question about the timeliness of such an acceptance, the court is constrained to agree with the defendant. Implicit in the understanding of the parties, and of their counsel, was that the offer would be open for as long as the plaintiff had a viable case, up until the second day of jury selection. (Emphasis added.) Once Judge Blue had granted summary judgment, the plaintiff's case was no longer viable. That neither party had actually learned of that decision until after plaintiff purported to accept the offer is immaterial; the factual underpinnings of the settlement offer had changed with the granting of summary judgment, and there was never a meeting of the minds on the notion that the offer would be still available even if summary judgment for the defendant were to be granted.
The motion to enforce the purported settlement agreement is therefore denied.