Delevieleuse v. MansonDelevieleuse v. Manson
- Reporters:
- , ,
- Before:
- Armentano
Lead Opinion
As a result of court proceedings for seven larceny counts, the plaintiff spent fifty-six days in presentenee custody under a mittimus containing one docket number. Each of the seven counts related to one of seven stolen checks. The plaintiff wrongfully took the seven checks on a single occasion and subsequently cashed each one separately, forging the payor’s name and keeping the proceeds of each transaction. On August 17, 1979, he pleaded guilty to all seven counts and received a six month sentence on each count. The court ordered that the first five sentences run consecutively to one another and that the sixth and seventh sentences run concurrently with the first five. Thus, the total effective sentence was thirty months.
For the fifty-six days of presentence custody, the defendant credited the plaintiff with having served fifty-six days of his total effective sentence. In doing so, the defendant followed the advice of the attorney general and allocated jail time credit once for each docket number contained in the mittimus. Complaining that he had not received the full credit required by
The plaintiff has finished serving his sentence. Although this is not a class action, the parties have stipulated that the issue before us affects approximately 200 inmates and both parties join in requesting this court to decide the issue.
“ ‘It is a well-settled general rule that the existence of an actual controversy is an essential requisite to appellate jurisdiction; it is not the province of appellate courts to decide moot questions, disconnected from the granting of actual relief or from the determination of which no practical relief can follow.’ Reynolds v. Vroom, 130 Conn. 512, 515, 36 A.2d 22; Phaneuf v. Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, 166 Conn. 449, 452, 352 A.2d 291; Harkins v. Driscoll, 165 Conn. 407, 409, 334 A.2d 901; Roy v. Mulcahy, 161 Conn. 324, 328, 288 A.2d 64; Maltbie, Conn. App. Proc. § 21. In the absence of an actual and existing controversy for us to adjudicate . . . the courts of this state may not be used as a vehicle to obtain judicial opinions upon points of law; Reply of the Judges, 33 Conn. 586; and where the question presented is purely academic, we must refuse to entertain the appeal. Young v. Tynan, 148 Conn. 456, 459, 172 A.2d 190.” Connecticut
In Liistro v. Robinson, 170 Conn. 116, 365 A.2d 109 (1976), and Taylor v. Robinson, 171 Conn. 691, 372 A.2d 102 (1976), we reached the merits of claims that inmates were entitled to bail pending the outcome of parole proceedings and that the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act;
The plaintiff asserts that his thirty month effective sentence comprises five consecutive and two concurrent six month sentences and that he is entitled to fifty-six days of presentence custody credit on each sentence which goes to make up his total effective sentence. Each of the plaintiff’s crimes was a larceny in the third degree, a class B misdemeanor; see
In interpreting “the language of a legislative enactment, ‘ [w] e are confined to the intention which is expressed in the words which the legislature has used.’ Baston v. Ricci, 174 Conn. 522, 528, 391 A.2d 161 (1978). ‘ “The intention of the legislature is found not in what it meant to say, but in the meaning of what it did say.” Colli v. Real Estate Commission, 169 Conn. 445, 452, 364 A.2d
We agree with the trial court that nothing in
There is error, the judgment is set aside and the case is remanded with direction to credit the plaintiff on each sentence with jail time in accordance with this opinion.
In this opinion Peters, Parskey and Armentano, Js., concurred.
Notes
We disapprove Connecticut Foundry Co. v. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 177 Conn. 17, 21, 411 A.2d 1 (1979), to the extent it is inconsistent with Taylor v. Robinson, 171 Conn. 691, 372 A.2d 102 (1976). We observe that Taylor v. Robinson, supra, noted the similarity of its circumstances to Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 96 S. Ct. 347, 46 L. Ed. 2d 350 (1975), but specifically declined to follow that case which Connecticut Foundry Co. v. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, supra, 20-21, quoted as the source for its “reasonable expectation” requirement. Connectiout Foundry Co. did not overrule Taylor v. Robinson or establish divergent mootness standards in parole and labor cases. Furthermore, Connectiout Foundry Co. did not discuss the extent to which the public importance of a question compensates for the reduced weight of other factors that militate against the mootness of the question.
Under the provisions of
Although the views of a subsequent legislature form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one; City of Milwaukee v. Illinois, 451 U.S. 304, 332n, 101 S. Ct. 1784, 68 L. Ed. 2d 114 (1981) ; Consumer Product Safety Commission v. G.T.E. Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 117-18, 100 S. Ct. 2051, 64 L. Ed. 2d 766 (1980); we note that the legislature recently has made
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting). I would not reach the merits of this appeal because I believe the appeal is moot. This court has recently adopted and adhered to the principle, expounded by the United States Supreme Court; see Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 149, 96 S. Ct. 347, 46 L. Ed. 2d 350 (1975); that, in the absence of a class action, a case is not moot if, inter alia, there is a “ ‘reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again.’ ” Connecticut Foundry Co. v. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 177 Conn. 17, 21, 411 A.2d 1 (1979) ;1 see CEUI v. CSEA, 183 Conn. 235, 249-50, 439 A.2d 321 (1981); DeFonce Construction Corporation v. Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, 177 Conn. 472, 475, 418 A.2d
Even under a very liberal interpretation of the “reasonable expectation” standard, I fail to see how the plaintiff in this case may well be subject to the same statute in question, i.e.,
Therefore, I dissent and would dismiss this matter as moot.
We specifically stated that, “in the absence of a class action, the ‘capable of repetition, yet evading review’ doctrine was limited to the situation where two elements combined: (1) the challenged action was in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or expiration, and (2) there was reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again.” Connecticut Foundry Co. v. International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 177 Conn. 17, 20-21, 411 A.2d 1 (1979), quoting Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 149, 96 S. Ct. 347, 46 L. Ed. 2d 350 (1975).
In Connecticut Foundry, supra, the defendants, although conceding that their appeal may have been moot, urged us to address the issue raised in their appeal and “to provide a definitive interpretation of the statute in question so as to preclude the recurrence of any similar dispute in the future and to protect labor generally from the abuses of unrestrained issuance of injunctions in industrial controversies.” Id., 20. We dismissed the appeal as moot, holding that such a reason was insufficient to meet the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” standard since the record before us was “devoid of any evidence demonstrating the existence of a ‘reasonable expectation’ that these defendants will again be subjected to the action complained of here.” Id., 21.