Motor Vehicle Law: Plaintiffs obtain reversal of defendant’s summary judgment in motor vehicle accident case

In a head-on motor vehicle collision case, that resulted in the death of the defendants’ decedent, the plaintiff alleged that the decedent’s negligent operation of her motor vehicle caused her vehicle to cross over the double yellow lines, directly into the plaintiff’s lane of travel. Defendants filed requests for admission that the plaintiff admit that he was distracted from the road prior to the accident and that he was unaware of any evidence to contest that the collision happened in the decedent’s northbound lane of travel. Plaintiffs ultimately failed to respond to such requests and these admissions were deemed admitted by the plaintiff pursuant to the rules of practice. Thereafter, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, claiming that the admissions of the plaintiff provided uncontested evidence that, in the plaintiff’s distracted state, he had driven from his southbound land of travel into the northbound lane and thus caused the collision.

The defendants also submitted an affidavit from an engineer and reconstructionist who attested that his review of the accident conclusively established that the plaintiff’s vehicle crossed into the northbound lane and collided with decedent’s vehicle. In opposition, the plaintiff submitted a signed, written statement from the only eyewitness who recalled that he had been driving behind the plaintiff in the northbound lane and saw the decedent’s vehicle drift into the plaintiff’s lane. The witness statement was inaccurate as the plaintiff was driving in the southbound lane, not the northbound lane. The trial court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the grounds that because the plaintiff relied on an inconsistent statement from an eyewitness and that the facts deemed admitted by the plaintiff demonstrated that the collision occurred in the decedent’s lane of travel, no genuine issue of material fact existed concerning the location of the collision.

The plaintiff appealed from the summary judgment rendered by the trial court in favor of the defendants, claiming that the evidence and affidavit on which the defendants relied in support of their motion did not demonstrate an absence of any genuine issue of material fact as to the allegations of negligence in the complaint. On appeal, the Appellate Court reverses summary judgment.  The Appellate Court concludes that the admissions made by the plaintiff as a result of failing to timely respond did not address any conduct of the decedent prior to the collision and subsequently did not in any way resolve or dispel the allegations made against the decedent.  The court concluded that the affidavit made by the engineer was similarly deficient in addressing the allegations of negligence in the complaint as the affidavit was not based on personal observations of the collision or knowledge about how it occurred, nor did it appear that the engineer reviewed the police report concerning the accident. In other words, the affidavit addressed only the location of the accident and not whether any actions of the decedent caused or contributed to the collision. Therefore, the evidence on which the defendants relied did not resolve the factual allegations of negligence.

The Appellate Court finds the defendants did not meet their burden. Additionally, the Appellate Court finds that the sworn eyewitness statement would be sufficient to establish the existence of a genuine issue of material fact concerning the cause of the accident, precluding summary judgment. Although the eyewitness was mistaken as to the direction in which he was traveling, the eyewitness was able to describe in detail the events leading up to and what happened after the collision. The court therefore concluded that such a sworn statement constitutes sufficient countervailing evidence concerning the cause of the collision and whether the witness was mistaken as to his direction of travel is a factual matter to be determined by a jury during trial. Tran v. Woodworth, 225 Conn. App. 514, 517, 317 A.3d 117, 122 (2024)