62 Conn. App. 462 | Conn. App. Ct. | 2001
Opinion
The defendants Chris L. Johnson and Corrine J. Johnson
In defense of the foreclosure action, the defendants claimed that the notice requirements for meetings of the unit owners to consider ratification of the budgets in 1997 and 1998 as mandated by § 47-245 (c) were not met, and, therefore, the budgets adopted at those meetings were void, and the assessments based on them were unenforceable. The plaintiff argued that regardless of the defective notice of the budget meetings in question, the saving provision of § 47-245 (c) permitted it to continue to enforce previously ratified assessments.
The court based its decision largely on the language of § 47-245 (c), which provides in relevant part that “[w]ithin thirty days after adoption of any proposed budget for the common interest community, the executive board shall provide a summary of the budget to all the unit owners and shall set a date for a meeting of the unit owners to consider ratification of the budget not less than fourteen nor more than thirty days after mailing of the summary. ... In the event the proposed budget is rejected, the periodic budget last ratified by the unit owners shall be continued until such time as
On appeal, the defendants argue that the saving provision of § 47-245 (c) is not applicable to the present case. The defendants claim that because notice of the 1997 and 1998 budget meetings was improper, the budgets ratified at those meetings were nullities. The defendants further claim that the saving provision of § 47-245 (c) is invoked only if the budgets were rejected. Thus, the defendants assert that since the budgets were not rejected, the court improperly applied § 47-245 (c). In response, the plaintiff argues that the saving provision of § 47-245 (c) should be applied regardless of whether the budgets were rejected or invalidated. The plaintiff, therefore, urges this court to liberally construe the language of § 47-245 (c). The plaintiff argues that the defendant’s strict interpretation and narrow application of the provision would lead to bizarre results. Additionally,
“Statutory construction . . . presents a question of law over which our review is plenary. . . . According to our long-standing principles of statutory construction, our fundamental objective is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the legislature. ... In determining the intent of a statute, we look to the words of the statute itself, to the legislative history and circumstances surrounding its enactment, to the legislative policy it was designed to implement, and to its relationship to existing legislation and common law principles governing the same general subject matter.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) King v. Sultar, 253 Conn. 429,437-38,754A.2d 782 (2000); Coelho v. ITT Hartford, 251 Conn. 106, 110, 752 A.2d 1063 (1999). “Common sense must be used [when construing statutes] and courts will assume that the legislature intended to accomplish a reasonable and rational result.” Candle-wood Landing Condominium Assn., Inc. v. New Milford, 44 Conn. App. 107, 110, 686 A.2d 1007 (1997); see King v. Board of Education, 203 Conn. 324, 332-33, 524 A.2d 1131 (1987).
Section 47-245 is only one provision of a much larger statutory design. The Common Interest Ownership Act (act), General Statutes § 47-200 et seq., “is a comprehensive legislative scheme regulating all forms of common interest ownership that is largely modeled on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.” Nicotra Wieler Investment Management, Inc. v. Grower, 207 Conn. 441, 447, 541 A.2d 1226 (1988). The act “expressly aspires to serve as a ‘general act intended as a unified coverage of its subject matter . . . .’ General Statutes § 47-208.” Fruin v. Colonnade One at Greenwich Ltd. Partnership, 237 Conn. 123, 131, 676 A.2d 369 (1996). The act “is a detailed statutory scheme governing the
Fiscal administration under the act is a two step process. First, the executive board of a unit owners’ association must adopt a budget for the upcoming year. General Statutes § 47-244 (a); see also § 25.2 of the plaintiffs declaration. Second, the unit owners must either reject or ratify the proposed budget at an annual meeting. General Statutes § 47-245 (c); see also § 19.5 of the plaintiff’s declaration. Section 47-245 (c) further requires that the annual meeting be held no fewer than fourteen days and no more than thirty days after the budget is mailed to the unit owners.
There is a clear intention in the act that a unit owners’ association should not operate without a budget or without the collection of common assessments in the event that the association has failed to ratify a budget. Comment 2 to § 3-103 of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act provides that the provisions of paragraph (c), which contains the same language as General Statutes § 47-245 (c), “permit the unit owners to disapprove any proposed budget, but a rejection of the bud
Section 47-245 (c) provides that if “the proposed budget is rejected, the periodic budget last ratified by the unit owners shall be continued until such time as the unit owners ratify a subsequent budget proposed by the executive board.” The obvious purpose of this saving provision is to permit the continuation of the last budget until a new one is duly ratified, and it makes little difference whether the failure to ratify was because the budget was rejected or was not validly approved and ratified. This interpretation that the last ratified budget should carry over if unit owners do not ratify a new budget is further supported by the language of Comment 2 to § 3-103 of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, in which the drafters state that a unit owners’ association may fail to ratify a budget, but “assessments continue on the basis of the last approved periodic budget until the new budget is in effect.”
Therefore, because we must avoid interpreting a statute in a manner that would have it function in a difficult and possibly bizarre fashion; Ford Motor Credit Co. v. B. W. Beardsley, Inc., 208 Conn. 13, 19, 542 A.2d 1159 (1988); we are persuaded that a liberal interpretation
Our conclusion that the language of § 47-245 (c) should be liberally construed is further supported by the fact that the defendants were not prejudiced by the actions of the plaintiff. Inadequate notice of the 1997 and 1998 meetings did not cause prejudice to the defendants. The assessments calculated by the 1996 budget are no different in sum from those levied pursuant to the 1997 and 1998 budgets. Pursuant to § 47-245 (c), the defendants remain liable for the unpaid assessments mandated by the 1996 budget effective through the 1997 and 1998 fiscal years. Therefore, because the dollar amounts of the assessments are the same under the 1996, 1997 and 1998 budgets, the defendants have not been prejudiced by the plaintiffs failure to give timely notice for the 1997 and 1998 budget meetings.
In light of our determination that the language of § 47-245 (c) should be liberally construed to require the application of the last ratified budget in the event that an association has failed to ratify a proposed budget, we conclude that the court correctly applied the language of § 47-245 (c) and properly determined the outstanding assessments based on the 1996 budget. We conclude, therefore, that the judgment of the court fore
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
The defendant New Milford Bank and Trust Company is not involved in this appeal. We refer in this opinion to the defendants Chris L. Johnson and Corrine J. Johnson as the defendants.
General Statutes § 47-245 (c) provides: “Within thirty days after adoption of any proposed budget for the common interest community, the executive board shall provide a summary of the budget to all the unit owners and shall set a date for a meeting of the unit owners to consider ratification of the budget not less than fourteen nor more than thirty days after mailing of the summary. Unless at that meeting a majority of all unit owners, or any larger vote specified in the declaration, reject the budget, the budget is ratified, whether or not a quorum is present. In the event the proposed budget is rejected, the periodic budget last ratified by the unit owners shall be continued until such time as the unit owners ratify a subsequent budget proposed by the executive board.”
Because § 19.5 of the plaintiffs declaration contains the same language as General Statutes § 47-245 (c), we refer to the statute only.
The parties stipulated at trial that if the court found that these liens were enforceable, the amount due for those years and the then current year would be $5308.