Scient Fed. Credit Union v. Rabon

211 Conn.App. 264

272 A.3d 264

SCIENT FEDERAL CREDIT UNION

v.Mark RABON

AC 43915

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued January 6, 2022

Officially released March 15, 2022

Mark E. Rabon, self-represented, the appellant (defendant).

Kyle R. Barrett, New Haven, for the appellee (plaintiff).

Bright, C. J., and Elgo and Suarez, Js.

SUAREZ, J.

In this action seeking to recover credit card debt, the self-represented defendant, Mark Rabon, appeals from the judgment rendered by the trial court in favor of the plaintiff, Scient Federal Credit Union, following the granting of the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. The defendant claims that the trial court improperly (1) granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and (2) denied the defendant's motion to dismiss. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant for our resolution of the defendant's claims. The plaintiff initiated this action by a single count complaint, which was dated July 13, 2017. In the complaint, the plaintiff alleged that "[b]y virtue of a Visa credit card agreement, the defendant applied for and received a credit card." The plaintiff further alleged that "[t]he defendant defaulted under the terms of the credit card agreement by failing to make the payments agreed to therein." Finally, the plaintiff alleged that "the defendant has failed and refused to satisfy the debt owed to the plaintiff" and that, "[a]s a result of the defendant's conduct, the plaintiff has been damaged."

Following the commencement of the present case, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss and a supporting memorandum of law on March 8, 2018. The defendant moved to dismiss this action on the ground that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over him due to insufficient service of process.¹ The plaintiff filed an objection to the motion to dismiss on April 18, 2018. The court, Hon. James J. Devine , judge trial referee, denied the motion to dismiss on May 1, 2018, and sustained the plaintiff's objection to the motion on the same day without issuing a memorandum of decision.

On September 27, 2018, the defendant filed a motion to strike, to which the plaintiff objected. In his motion to strike, the defendant alleged that "[t]he complaint [did] not properly plead facts with enough specificity" and that "[t]he complaint [alleged] conclusions that [were] unsupported by the facts alleged." The court, Hon. James J. Devine , judge trial referee, sustained the plaintiff's objection to the motion on February 4, 2019, and the motion was denied on February 6, 2019.

On May 30, 2019, the plaintiff filed a motion for summary judgment claiming that no genuine issues of material fact existed and that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law as to both liability and damages. In support of its motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff submitted the affidavit of Irvine Hagewood, the director of collections for the plaintiff. The affidavit stated that the defendant submitted a "Loanliner Visa credit card application" to the plaintiff and, as a result of that application, the defendant received two credit cards. The plaintiff extended the credit accounts to the defendant on or about April 4, 2013. The defendant thereafter defaulted on the accounts by failing to pay the amounts that were due under the agreement. The affidavit further stated that the defendant was indebted to the plaintiff in the total amount of $46,812.08.² The affidavit provided that the defendant had failed to pay the plaintiff the balance due, which constituted the outstanding balances under both accounts. The plaintiff attached to its affidavit several exhibits, including the defendant's application, credit card disclosure statements, transaction listings for the two accounts, and the credit card agreement.

In its memorandum of law in support of the motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff argued that, because "the defendant has raised no special defenses and the plaintiff's affidavit in support of summary judgment establishes the defendant's liability to the plaintiff and the amount of damages owed, summary judgment is proper as there are no genuine issues of material fact left in dispute and the plaintiff is entitled to judgment as a matter of law."

On November 12, 2019, the defendant filed his objection to the motion and a memorandum in opposition to the motion for summary judgment. In the memorandum, the defendant argued that genuine issues of material fact existed for several reasons. The defendant asserted that the plaintiff's complaint referenced only one credit card agreement that had been breached and indicated that the defendant had received only one credit card. Although not stated in the complaint, the plaintiff's memorandum of law in support of the motion for summary judgment asserted that the total amount of damages being sought reflected a combination of debts from two separate credit card accounts. The defendant also asserted in an affidavit, which was filed with his objection to the motion for summary judgment, that he received more than one credit card from the plaintiff. The defendant's memorandum further asserted that both the plaintiff's complaint and Hagewood's affidavit failed to identify which credit card agreement had been breached. The defendant argued that the motion for summary judgment and the complaint "stand in stark contradiction" because the complaint referenced only one credit card and underlying agreement, while the motion for summary judgment referenced multiple credit cards with separate debts, along with documents indicating the existence of separate agreements.³

Despite raising these arguments, the defendant admitted in his affidavit, and he does not dispute on appeal, that he held multiple credit card accounts with the plaintiff. In his memorandum in opposition to the motion for summary judgment, the defendant also admitted that he owed the total amount being sought of $46,812.08, and that this amount reflected the combined balance of multiple credit cards.⁴

On November 12, 2019, the court, Calmar, J. , ordered the defendant to refile his memorandum because it contained personal identifying information. The memorandum was refiled with redactions but without substantive changes on November 21, 2019. Prior to the defendant's refiling of the memorandum, on November 15, 2019, the court, Hon. James J. Devine , judge trial referee, granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. The defendant filed a motion to reargue on November 21, 2019, which the court denied on January 22, 2020. The defendant also filed a motion for articulation on November 21, 2019, which the court denied on January 22, 2020.

The defendant filed the present appeal on February 10, 2020. Subsequent to filing this appeal, the defendant moved for the court to issue a written decision pursuant to Practice Book § 64-1, and the court issued its memorandum of decision on February 25, 2020. In its memorandum of decision, the court stated that, because the "defendant has raised no special defenses and the plaintiff's affidavit in support of summary judgment establishes the defendant's liability to the plaintiff and the amount of damages owed, summary judgment is proper as there are no genuine issues of material fact left in dispute and the plaintiff is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." This appeal followed.

I

The defendant first claims that the trial court improperly granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Specifically, the defendant claims that he demonstrated that there were genuine issues of material fact in dispute and, therefore, the court should not have granted the plaintiff's motion. Because the record establishes that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether the defendant applied for and received two separate credit accounts from the plaintiff by virtue of a single application or as to the total amount of the debt that the defendant owed on the two accounts, we conclude that the court properly granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment.

We now set forth the legal principles and standard of review relevant to this claim. "The fundamental purpose of summary judgment is preventing unnecessary trials. ... If a [party] is unable to present sufficient evidence in support of an essential element of his cause of action at trial, he cannot prevail as a matter of law. ... To avert these types of ill-fated cases from advancing to trial, following adequate time for discovery, a [party] may properly be called upon at the summary judgment stage to demonstrate that he possesses sufficient counterevidence to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to any, or even all, of the essential elements of his cause of action. ...

"Practice Book § [17-49] provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. ... In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. ... The party seeking summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue [of] material facts which, under applicable principles of substantive law, entitle him to a judgment as a matter of law ... and the party opposing such a motion must provide an evidentiary foundation to demonstrate the existence of a genuine issue of material fact. ...

"It is not enough ... for the opposing party merely to assert the existence of such a disputed issue. Mere assertions of fact ... are insufficient to establish the existence of a material fact and, therefore, cannot refute evidence properly presented to the court. ... [T]ypically [d]emonstrating a genuine issue requires a showing of evidentiary facts or substantial evidence outside the pleadings from which material facts alleged in the...