Brothers Abandoned Claims in Estate Contest

The Connecticut appeal in Tyler v. Tyler involved two brothers who were feuding over their mother’s trust but teamed up against the attorney serving as trustee. The Appellate Court concluded that the brothers abandoned their claims against the trustee-attorney.

The case turns on a procedural matter, which is unfortunate because the procedural background is complex — the advance release opinion is 17 pages. I will shorten it as best as I can.

Mom had a living trust and an attorney serving as trustee. The trust divided the remainder among Mom’s five sons according to a formula. When Mom passed, one son was going to get nothing. He started an action against his brothers and the trustee-attorney. One of the defendant-brothers cross-claimed against the trustee-attorney. Between the complaint and the cross-complaint, the brothers asserted what amounted to five distinct counts against the attorney-trustee (complaint asserted five counts and the cross-complaint repeated four of the five).

The trustee-attorney moved for summary judgment as to all claims against him. The trial court granted that motion as to four of the five distinct claims. The brother defendants also had moved for summary judgment as to the claims against them. The advance release opinion is not clear but it seems the trial granted summary judgment for the defendant-brothers on at least one claim against them.

On reargument, the trial court found that there was a genuine issue of material fact in respect of the trustee-attorney and reversed as to that one fact issue. The one fact issue was central to at least two of the four causes of action as to which the trial court had granted summary judgment.  The trial court did not specify which causes of action remained in the case but it’s clear that there were at least two — the one the trial court left in the case with its original summary judgment decision and at least one that was added back on reargument.

The brothers appealed. This is where it gets tricky. While the appeal was pending, the trial court conducted a jury trial on the claims remaining against the trustee-attorney. The jury returned a general verdict for the trustee-attorney. The brothers did not appeal the verdict. Later, the Appellate Court dismissed the brothers’ appeal as to the trustee-attorney claims because the summary judgment ruling was not a final judgment in that it did not dispose of all claims against the trustee-attorney. But, the Appellate Court also reversed and remanded as to one of the claims against the defendant-brothers.

Back in the trial court, the brothers maintained that they were entitled to a trial not only as to the remanded claim against the defendant-brothers but also as to the  claims remaining against the trustee-attorney based on the fact issue the trial court found on reargument. The brothers claimed that there had to be claims remaining against the trustee-attorney because the Appellate Court dismissed the appeal for lack of a final judgment against him after the jury trial.

The trustee-attorney countered that the brothers had abandoned the claims dependent on the one fact issue because (i) there was a jury trial against the trustee-attorney at a time when those claims were in the case; and (ii) the brothers did not “ask that the jury be instructed on those claims at trial and, if dissatisfied with the court’s instructions as given, to claim error in those instructions in a subsequent appeal ….”

The trial court concluded there were no claims remaining against the trustee-attorney. The brothers appealed but they did not submit a trial transcript. The Appellate Court affirmed.

Brothers’ Main Argument on Appeal

The brothers’ argument went more or less like this: Their appeal was pending at the time the jury trial occurred. After the jury trial concluded, the Appellate Court dismissed their appeal because the summary judgment decision did not dispose of all claims against the trustee-attorney. Therefore, there were claims remaining against the trustee-attorney after the jury trial.

Appellate Court Concludes Brothers Abandoned their Claims

The Appellate Court “agree[d] with [the trustee-attorney’s] argument that, even in the absence of a trial transcript, we can clearly tell from the [borthers’] failure to appeal from the judgment rendered upon the jury’s general verdict that none of their claims against him were still pending after the initial appeal was dismissed.” The court gave three reasons for this conclusion:

“First, if and to the extent that the jury was actually instructed on the [brothers’] pending claims, then such claims were no longer pending in the trial court after trial because they all had been resolved in [the trustee-attorney’s] favor by the jury’s general verdict. By not appealing from that judgment, the [brothers] would have accepted the finality of the jury’s determinations with respect to all such instructed-upon claims.”

“Second, if any pending claims were not prosecuted to verdict at trial because the [brothers] did not seek to prove them or to have the jury instructed upon them at trial, then by so failing to prosecute them, they must be deemed to have abandoned such claims, and thus to have forfeited their right to prosecute them further.”

“Third and finally, if the [brothers] requested that the jury be instructed on certain pending claims but the trial court failed or refused to give such instructions, then Tatoian is correct in arguing that they could and should have appealed from the judgment rendered against them upon the jury’s general verdict, claiming error in the court’s failure or refusal to instruct the jury as requested. The [brothers’] failure to appeal from the judgment on the basis of such instructional error constituted an abandonment of all claims as to which the court refused to instruct the jury as requested just as surely as if the [brothers] had not sought instruction on them at all.”

Dismissal of Appeal does Not Mean Claims Remained

The Appellate Court separately addressed the brothers’ argument that there had to be claims remaining against the trustee-attorney because the court dismissed the appeal for that reason after the jury trial. The court said:

“The [brothers’] claim is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our basic procedure. It is axiomatic that the jurisdiction of this court is restricted to appeals from judgments that are final…. The [brothers] misunderstand the correct measuring point for determining if the judgment appealed from is final…. [W]e concluded that the … summary judgment ruling, from which the [brothers] appealed, was not a final judgment as to [the trustee-attorney] at the time the appeal therefrom was filed because it did not dispose of all of the counts then pending against him. We did not conclude that there was no final judgment as to [the trustee-attorney] at the later time when we finally dismissed the appeal, because the measuring point for determining if an appeal is from a final judgment is when the appeal is filed.”

Other Things to Note

In concluding that there were no claims remaining against the trustee-attorney, the trial court accepted the trustee-attorney’s analysis and gave two additional reasons: “First, because the trial court never ordered bifurcation of the trial, all of the [brothers’] pending claims against [the trustee-attorney] were presumptively contested in that trial. Second, because the jury returned a general verdict for [the trustee-attorney], all such pending claims were presumptively decided in his favor at trial.”

The Appellate Court rejected these reasons: “Because, in the absence of a trial transcript, we cannot determine whether or not such jury instructions were actually given in this case, we cannot agree with the trial court’s presumptive finding that all of the [brothers’] pending claims against [the trustee attorney] on which summary judgment was not previously rendered were finally resolved in his favor by the jury’s general verdict at trial.”