227 Conn. 601 | Conn. | 1993
The plaintiff, Ann B. Lunn, appeals from the judgment of the trial court, concluding, on
In July, 1991, the plaintiff commenced the present action alleging that the defendant had wrongfully, unlawfully, and unreasonably denied her requests to subdivide and construct a single-family dwelling on her property on the westerly side of Contentment Island Road in the Tokeneke section of Darien. The plaintiff sought an injunction requiring the defendant to approve her requests. The defendant counterclaimed seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the plaintiff from selling, transferring or building on the property in violation of applicable restrictive covenants prior to January 1, 2000.
After a hearing, the trial court, Hon. George A. Saden, state trial referee, rendered a judgment for the defendant on both the complaint and the counterclaim, enjoining the plaintiff from constructing a house on the property in question. The plaintiff appealed to the Appellate Court. We transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to Practice Book § 4023 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c). We affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The parties stipulated to and the trial court found the following facts. On October 10, 1950, a 4.9 acre tract of land on the westerly side of Contentment Island Road was conveyed by warranty deed from Norton, Inc., to Robert L. Cudd. The deed from Norton, Inc., to Cudd contained certain restrictive covenants.
Thereafter, in July, 1984, the plaintiff and Glanville applied to the Darien planning and zoning commission (commission) to divide the 3.9 acre parcel between them for the sole expressed purpose of gaining individual ownership of the land directly across the street from their respective houses. They specifically represented to the commission that they were not seeking to divide their land for approval as building sites and that they
In 1985, counsel for the plaintiff and Glanville wrote to Warren MacKenzie, then president of the defendant, to request the defendant’s approval of the division. In his letter, he expressed his belief that, because the separate parcels were created only for annexation to the plaintiff’s and Glanville’s existing residential lots, and the approval of those lots as building sites was not
In March, 1985, MacKenzie, acting on behalf of the defendant, sent a letter to the plaintiff and Glanville, approving the division of the 3.9 acre parcel. He qualified the defendant’s approval, however, by stating that the approval was not a waiver of any other restrictive covenant contained in the deed, nor a waiver of the right of the defendant to require approval of any further division of either parcel. In April, 1985, the plaintiff and Glanville executed cross conveyances so that each became the sole owner of that portion of the divided parcel directly across the road from the respective residence of each.
MacKenzie served as president of the defendant until November, 1985. Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff retained MacKenzie, an attorney, to represent her in connection with her Tokeneke real estate. In 1986, MacKenzie filed an application with the commission seeking approval of a plan to subdivide the plaintiff’s property for the purpose of creating a building site on the westerly side of Contentment Island Road by separating the lot on which the plaintiff’s house is located from the lot on the westerly side of the road that had been annexed to her house lot in March, 1985. The application was ultimately approved by the commission on July 14, 1987.
In January, 1990, MacKenzie applied to the defendant for approval of the plaintiff’s subdivision and building plans. The defendant initially took the position that, because of the wording of the restrictive covenants, it was not empowered to review or approve the proposed
Pursuant to the court’s order, the defendant held a public hearing on February 5, 1991, to consider the plaintiff’s application. On February 26, 1991, the defendant, by a unanimous vote, denied the plaintiff’s request for subdivision approval.
On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the trial court improperly concluded that: (1) the defendant acted reasonably and in good faith in denying the plaintiffs application for approval of subdivision and building plans; (2) the plaintiff was estopped from claiming injunctive relief; (3) the plaintiff impliedly waived a claim to injunctive relief; and (4) the defendant was entitled to injunctive relief. Because we agree with the trial court that the plaintiff was estopped from claiming injunctive relief, we find it unnecessary to reach the plaintiffs other claims.
To decide this appeal we are required to resolve the plaintiff’s claim that the trial court was incorrect when it determined that the defendant had established the applicability of the doctrine of equitable estoppel. Two essential elements must be proved by the party claiming equitable estoppel in order to have the doctrine apply: “ ‘[T]he party against whom estoppel is claimed must do or say something calculated or intended to induce another party to believe that certain facts exist and to act on that belief; and the other party must change its position in reliance on those facts, thereby incurring some injury.’ ” Wadia Enterprises, Inc. v. Hirschfeld, 224 Conn. 240, 252 n.7, 618 A.2d 506 (1992), quoting O’Sullivan v. Bergenty, 214 Conn. 641, 648, 573 A.2d 729 (1990). For estoppel to exist, there must be misleading conduct resulting in prejudice to the other party. John F. Epina Realty, Inc. v. Space Realty, Inc., 194 Conn. 71, 85, 480 A.2d 499 (1984). The plaintiff argues that the defendant was not entitled to the relief provided by equitable estoppel because it failed to prove that it suffered any injury as a result of her representations.
The trial court found that the plaintiff acted “in complete abnegation of the very clear and specific statements and promises of [her] and her counsel that these parcels would remain open land and would provide a scenic view for [the] Plaintiff’s and Glanville’s homes on the easterly side of Contentment Island Road which [the] Plaintiff and Glanville claimed they sought to ‘protect’ when they bought the westerly tract at a cheap price because it was not buildable.” The trial court concluded that “[considering all of the circumstances surrounding [the] Plaintiff’s first request for ‘annexation’ . . . causing the Defendant Association to accede to the ‘annexation’ only because of the Plaintiff’s representations, but not granting approval as a building site, it seems that ... an estoppel . . . [has] application here.” (Emphasis in original.)
The plaintiff, however, contends that estoppel is not applicable because the defendant was not injured in any way by what occurred in the “annexation” proceedings before either the commission or the defendant because the trial court found that subdivision and
Thus, the trial court found the commission’s 1984 and the defendant’s 1985 approval were unnecessary. “[T]he only thing that was accomplished by their application was to draw a line between [the] Plaintiff’s and Glanville’s portions and labeling them la and 2a.” The trial court noted that if the plaintiff and Glanville wanted to divide the property between themselves, “a surveyed line and exchange of deeds between them would have accomplished that without seeking [planning and zoning] approval of an ‘annexation’ which the Commission was not empowered to grant them.”
The trial court found, however, that the plaintiff “pursued vigorously the so-called ‘annexation’ procedure mentioned above even though it may have been legally useless because, notwithstanding that fact, the idea could serve to obtain [the commission’s] impri
By agreeing to the subdivision of the land on the westerly side of Contentment Island Road for “annexation” purposes in 1985, the defendant could no longer consider the original 3.9 acre parcel when faced with the plaintiff’s subsequent application for subdivision for building purposes that is the subject of this appeal. Had the defendant been confronted with a subdivision application for building purposes in 1985, it would have been able to exercise some control over the configuration of the lots and the location of any proposed structures and waste disposal systems on the entire 3.9 acre parcel. Now, the defendant is faced with the fait accompli of two separate properties and is limited to considering the location of the structure and septic system on the plaintiff’s two acre parcel. Moreover, a subdivision of the original 3.9 acre parcel for building purposes might have been denied altogether if the defendant had determined that it was too small or otherwise inadequate for two houses. Now, the defendant is met with Wo separate lots with the potential for two houses. We conclude that the trial court could properly have found from the evidence that “the pursuit of the ‘annexation’ request to divide the land . . . was a maneuver . . .
On the basis of the trial court’s findings, it was reasonable for it to conclude that the plaintiff intended to induce the defendant association to believe that she would keep the subject parcel as open space in order to gain approval of the initial subdivision and that the defendant granted such subdivision in reliance on that representation, thereby prejudicing itself in relation to the plaintiff’s later application for a subdivision to create a building site. We conclude that the trial court could properly have found that the defendant successfully proved the elements of estoppel so as to defeat the plaintiff’s claim for injunctive relief.
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other justices concurred.
See footnote 2.
The covenant and restrictions provided: “1. That the plans, specifications, and location of any and all buildings and installations to be constructed on the premises hereby conveyed shall be submitted to and approved by
“2. That said premises are not to be used for any business purpose whatsoever, or for any purpose other than a strictly private residence, and they are not to be subdivided for the purpose of sale or transfer, and no sewer, cesspool, or drain shall be constructed, used, maintained, or permitted thereon (other than for surface water), unless approval be first obtained in the manner hereinabove provided for the approval of the plans and location of any building before erecting the same on said premises.
“3. That the several conditions and provisions herein contained shall run with the land hereby conveyed, and the same shall be binding upon the said Grantee, his heirs, executors, administrators and assigns until the first day of January, A.D., 2000.”
The trial court found that “both parties agree that a subdivision in this case and plans for [a] one-family house require approval of the Defendant Association.”
At this point, the court noted the fact that the restrictive covenants in issue expire on January 1, 2000, approximately fifteen years from the date of the commission hearing.
The trial court noted that annexation was actually impossible because the parcels were separated from the housing lots by a road, “so that what [the] Plaintiff and Glanville were probably talking about was a split of the tract of land on the west side of the Road .... In fact this whole proceeding before the [commission] appears to be totally unnecessary. If all that the Plaintiff and Glanville were seeking was a division of the land between themselves, it would seem a surveyed line and exchange of deeds between them would have accomplished that without seeking [planning and zoning] approval of an ‘annexation’ which the commission was not empowered to grant them.”
An appeal was taken from the approval by an abutting property owner, and was denied by the court, Nigro, J., on June 22, 1989. A subsequent appeal to the Appellate Court was denied on November 16, 1989.
The trial court took note of the fact that the plaintiff had testified before Judge Hodgson that, at the time of purchase, she did not believe the subject property was “buildable.”
The trial court concluded that the denial of approval for a building site impliedly constituted a denial of the proposed building plans also. The court noted that the defendant gave considerable attention to both the subdivision and the building plans. The building plans proposed the construction of a single-family dwelling on the site.
The trial court also took note of the fact that the plaintiffs expert witness acknowledged that a septic system on the subject parcel would not overflow into the surface if the land was flooded by a tidal flood, which generally has a duration of two or three hours, but would fail if there was a long-term inundation. It was found that the septic system would be inundated several times a year due to storms in the area and that the entire property had been under water from time to time in the past. The plain
The commission itself later acknowledged that because of the purposes of the plaintiffs’ 1984 application the “requirements for the creation of developable lots under the Subdivision and Zoning Regulations did not apply.”
The trial court also enjoined the plaintiff from engaging in the construction of a residence on her land on the westerly side of Contentment Island Road, in violation of the restrictive covenant, until the year 2000. In view of its evidentiary findings, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in so doing. See Manley v. Pfeiffer, 176 Conn. 540, 544-45, 409 A.2d 1009 (1979); Hartford Electric Light Co. v. Levitz, 173 Conn. 15, 22, 376 A.2d 381 (1977).