Summary
In Dawson, the court held that the defendants' failure to provide notice of its counterclaim did not warrant a dismissal, due to the ease with which such a jurisdictional defect could be remedied.
Summary of this case from Tibbetts v. Town of GreenwichOpinion
(14728)
In response to the plaintiffs' action for injunctive relief, the defendant organizations and the defendant director of the baseball program they sponsored filed a counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment determining the validity of their interpretation of certain rules concerning eligibility to play on the plaintiff baseball team. From the judgment of the trial court dismissing their counterclaim as moot, the defendants appealed. Although the issue of the named plaintiffs right to play on the team was no longer justiciable for reasons of ineligibility other than those in issue here, the trial court should not have dismissed the counterclaim, there remaining in issue an unresolved collateral dispute concerning the defendants' authority to declare the forfeiture of the games played by the team during the season in question.
Argued September 23, 1993
Decision released October 19, 1993
Action to enjoin the defendants from preventing the named plaintiff from playing for the plaintiff Simsbury American Legion baseball team in accordance with the defendants' interpretation of the American Legion's eligibility rules, and for other relief, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Hartford-New Britain at New Britain, where the court, O'Neill, J., granted a temporary injunction; thereafter, the defendants filed a counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment determining that they had correctly interpreted their eligibility rules in originally banning the named plaintiff from playing for the Simsbury team, and the court, Jackaway, J., granted the plaintiffs' motion to dismiss the counterclaim and rendered judgment thereon, from which the defendants appealed. Reversed; further proceedings.
David J. Elliott, with whom were Richard C. Mahoney and, on the brief, Alan T. Levesque, for the appellants (defendants).
David Tilles, for the appellees (plaintiffs).
The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether a disagreement about the geographic eligibility of a player for an American Legion baseball team is rendered moot by the player's subsequent ineligibility on the ground of age. The plaintiffs, Andrew Dawson and the Simsbury American Legion Post No. 84 baseball team, brought an action to enjoin the defendants, David Farr, The American Legion and The American Legion Department of Connecticut, Inc., from interfering with the named plaintiff's playing for the plaintiff team during the 1992 summer season. After a hearing, the trial court, O'Neill, J., granted the plaintiffs' motion for a temporary injunction. Thereafter, the defendants not only filed an answer contesting the plaintiffs' further entitlement to permanent injunctive relief, but also filed a counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment sustaining their interpretation of the eligibility rules governing American Legion baseball teams and their authority to declare the forfeiture of the team's 1992 games.
At the end of the 1992 summer season, when, because of his age, Dawson had become permanently ineligible to play for the team, the plaintiffs filed a motion to dismiss the defendants' counterclaim. The plaintiffs claimed that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider the defendants' counterclaim because it had become moot and because the defendants had not complied with the notice requirements of Practice Book 390(d) governing claims for declaratory relief. The trial court, Jackaway, J., granted the plaintiffs' motion to dismiss the counterclaim. The defendants appealed from the judgment of dismissal to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book 4023 and General Statutes 51-199 (c). We reverse.
Practice Book 390 provides in relevant part: "The court will not render declaratory judgments upon the complaint of any person . . . "(d) unless all persons having an interest in the subject matter of the complaint . . . have reasonable notice thereof."
In their arguments on mootness to the trial court, and in their briefs to this court, the parties focused on the principle that, while cases that have become moot are ordinarily nonjusticiable, such cases may nonetheless warrant judicial resolution if, by the nature of their factual underpinnings, they are capable of repetition yet evade review. That analysis is predicated on the assumption that the case would otherwise be moot, i.e., that intervening events have made it impossible to grant any judicial relief to the present parties on any of their present claims.
As the parties agreed at oral argument before this court, however, the defendants' counterclaim is not moot. Although the rights and obligations of the individual plaintiff are no longer justiciable, the rights and obligations of the plaintiff team continue to be at issue. Dawson can no longer be enjoined from playing, but the team remains at risk because of the defendants' claimed right to declare the forfeiture of the games the team played during the 1992 season. Arguably, the risk of forfeiture is only a collateral consequence of Dawson's alleged ineligibility to play for the team. The continued existence of unresolved collateral disputes suffices, however, to prevent a controversy from becoming moot. See, e.g., Connecticut State Medical Society v. Commission on Hospitals Health Care, 223 Conn. 450, 455-56, 612 A.2d 1217 (1992); Hallas v. Windsor, 217 Conn. 689, 692, 587 A.2d 149 (1991); Moshier v. Goodnow, 217 Conn. 303, 306-308, 586 A.2d 557 (1991). Mootness was therefore not an appropriate ground for dismissal of the defendants' counterclaim.
The trial court also premised its dismissal of the defendants' counterclaim on their alleged failure to comply with the notice provisions of Practice Book 390(d) that govern complaints seeking a declaratory judgment. Even if the far-reaching consequences of the defendants' counterclaim would require notice to be given to interested persons in addition to the immediate parties to this litigation, the court should have considered the possibility of an appropriate order of notice instead of a dismissal of the defendants' counterclaim. As we recently clarified in Serrani v. Board of Ethics, 225 Conn. 305, 309-10, 622 A.2d 1009 (1993), "[a] jurisdictional defect relating to notice can be remedied in any of the ways noted in Connecticut Ins. Guaranty Assn. v. Raymark Corporation, [ 215 Conn. 224, 230, 575 A.2d 693 (1990)]. Notably, the [party seeking declaratory relief] may ask for an order of notice in order to comply with the procedural requirements of the Practice Book with respect to individuals whose identity might otherwise be difficult to ascertain. Once there has been compliance with 390(d), the trial court will have plenary authority to render whatever judgment it then deems appropriate. Id."
We express no opinion on the adequacy of the defendants' notice but invite the trial court to reconsider the issue in light of Serrani v. Board of Ethics, 225 Conn. 305, 622 A.2d 1009 (1993), and the cases therein cited.