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32 ¦ JUNE 15, 2020 CONNECTICUT OPINIONS

device, testifying that plaintiff ’s work was of DISCOVERY
little to no value and that he instead relied on
drawings made by his teenaged son in develop- Formulaic Objections to Interrogatories
ing the product. The patent application itself, Frustrate Discovery
which incorporated plaintiff ’s work, belied
these claims as did plaintiff ’s own evidence and CASE: Verrico v. Plymouth Rock Assurance Corp.
testimony. The court concluded that plaintiff COURT: Stamford/Norwalk J.D. at Stamford
acted in good faith. Plaintiff did what it prom- DOC. NO.: CV17-6033313
ised to do, at no cost to defendant and in the COURT OPINION BY: Povodator
hope of future rewards. Defendant, in contrast, DATE: May 15, 2020 • PAGES: 19
took advantage of plaintiff ’s labors and later The court granted plaintiffs’ motion to determine
reneged on their agreement, perhaps realizing the sufficiency of defendant’s responses and objec-
too late that an agreement to pay plaintiff by tions to plaintiffs’ request for admission, finding
the piece or by the hour would have been less that the overwhelming majority of defendant’s
costly. That was not the agreement entered into, responses were inadequate or evasive, and its ob-
however, and plaintiff was entitled to the ben- jections were similarly problematic. The court
efit of its bargain. The court awarded plaintiff opined that defendant appeared to have adopted a
over $2 million in damages and statutory inter- strategy of “object first, respond later,” most often
est, plus statutory and common law attorney using formulaic and overly general objections. As
fees in an amount to be determined. a result, many of the objections were simply inac-
curate, challenging, for example, plaintiffs’ alleged
failure to provide a limiting time frame when the
DAMAGES challenged interrogatories actually provided spe-

Court Denies Motion For Remittitur On cific dates. Only a handful of defendant’s responses
Noneconomic Damages provided straightforward statements of admission
or denial. After evaluating defendant’s responses
to each of plaintiffs’ 140 interrogatories, the court
CASE: Gonclaves v. Utica Mut. Ins. Co. ordered defendant to provide new responses, as di-
COURT: Waterbury J.D. at Waterbury rected by the court, within three weeks.
DOC. NO.: CV-15-6028864
COURT OPINION BY: Roraback
DATE: May 20, 2020 • PAGES: 8 EMPLOYMENT LITIGATION
Plaintiff ’s autistic son was injured while riding
on a school bus insured by defendant. The son
suffered life-threatening head injuries and re- Both Parties Fail to Substantiate
quired emergency brain surgery. He suffered ir- Breach of Contract Claims
reversible brain injury as a result of the collision CASE: Schofield v. Rafley, Inc.
and his autistic symptoms were severely exacer- COURT: Hartford J.D. at Hartford
bated by the event. At trial, plaintiff ’s counsel DOC. NO.: CV17-6078256
cried twice during closing argument, and read COURT OPINION BY: Peck
a poem to the jury about the boy’s suffering. DATE: May 14, 2020 • PAGES: 23
The jury awarded the plaintiff $23,050,000 for The court rendered partial judgment in favor of
economic damages and noneconomic damages. defendants and partial judgment in favor of plain-
The defendant filed a motion seeking an order tiff, finding that neither party was able to prove
of remittitur as to the noneconomic damages. their claims. Plaintiff was the principal of an au-
Defendant argued that the size of the noneco- tomotive service and repair shop known as Chief
nomic damages was attributable to the jury’s Automotive. She also worked at Chief as an auto-
sympathy and was inappropriate, given that the motive technician. Defendants offered plaintiff a
jury awarded less than half of the economic job. The offer included an offer to pay plaintiff a
damages requested. The court found the jury’s bonus equal to 10 percent of defendants’ gross sales
failure to award all of the economic damages to former Chief customers. Plaintiff accepted the
sought did not in itself warrant remittitur of offer and began working for defendants in March
the noneconomic damages. Upon review of 2014. Plaintiff later sued defendants for breach of
all the testimony, the court found the award contract and related claims, alleging they failed
to be just, fair, and reasonable, and denied the to pay her the full amount of the promised bonus
motion for remittitur. from March 2014 to March 2016, and that, after

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