Court Denies Managers' Apportionment Claim for Insufficient Information
Accident & Injury Accident & Injury Car Accident Accident & Injury Personal Injury
Summary: Blog post on the topic of apportionment of damages in car accident injury cases.
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Property managers made no claim in their apportionment complaint as to the nature or extent of any injuries or losses allegedly suffered by an injured pedestrian in the wake of a subsequent automobile accident.
In a personal injury action, plaintiff pedestrian moved to strike defendant property managers' apportionment complaint on the ground that the apportionment defendant, a driver, was not a person with whom the managers' negligent responsibility to pay damages in the pending case, if any, could have been lawfully apportioned under Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 52-572h and -102b.
The managers claimed that any damages awarded to the pedestrian had to be apportioned between the managers and the driver whose vehicle collided with the pedestrian's vehicle in another accident after the slip and fall which brought about the personal injury claim against the managers. The basis for the pedestrian's motion was that the managers' only claim of negligence against the driver involved a completely separate, causally unrelated motor vehicle accident that allegedly occurred more than one year after the fall at issue herein took place, causing separate injuries, losses, and damages. The pedestrian supported her motion to strike with two memoranda of law. The managers neither claimed, nor could have claimed, that the driver's alleged negligence or the automobile accident allegedly caused by it proximately caused the earlier fall in connection with which the pedestrian sought damages in the present case. Finally, the managers did not claim that the driver's alleged negligence otherwise combined with their own prior negligence to produce the same injuries and losses for which the pedestrian sought damages, and as such, the motion to strike was proper.
At Maya Murphy, P.C., our personal injury attorneys are dedicated to achieving the best results for individuals and their family members and loved ones whose daily lives have been disrupted by injury, whether caused by a motor vehicle or pedestrian accident, a slip and fall, medical malpractice, a defective product, or otherwise. Our attorneys are not afraid to aggressively pursue and litigate cases and have extensive experience litigating personal injury matters in both state and federal courts, and always with regard to the unique circumstances of our client and the injury he or she has sustained.
Source: Duby v. Tunxis Managaement Co., 2004 Conn. Super. LEXIS 1514 (Conn. Super. Ct. June 8, 2004)