425 A.2d 597 | Conn. Super. Ct. | 1980
The trial court found the following facts: The defendants leased from the plaintiff for approximately two years prior to the commencement of this action a second floor apartment pursuant to a month-to-month oral lease. The rent was due and payable on the first day of each month. The rent for June, July and August, 1979, was paid through the mail by money orders dated the fifteenth, sixteenth and fifteenth, respectively, and was accepted by the plaintiff without comment. On September 17, 1979, the defendants were served with a notice to quit possession for failure to pay the September rent. On September 18, the plaintiff received the rent through the mail by a personal money order dated September 14 in an envelope postmarked September 17. The plaintiff refused to accept the money order and commenced the present summary process action to which the defendants raised the special defenses of waiver and estoppel. The court found neither waiver nor estoppel and rendered judgment for the plaintiff from which the defendants have appealed.
The defendants raise three issues on appeal: (1) May the special defense of estoppel be properly raised in a summary process action? (2) Did the court err in *536 requiring the defendants to prove a conscious intention to mislead in order to establish estoppel? (3) Did the court err in finding that the defendants did not rely on the plaintiffs conduct?
The special defense of waiver has been abandoned by the defendants and will not be considered.
It is apparent from the memorandum of decision that the trial court considered the defendants' estoppel defense on its merits and did so adversely to them. At trial the plaintiff cited two cases to support his claim that estoppel cannot be pleaded as a special defense in a summary process action. He argued that the proper procedure required the defendants to bring a separate action in equity. In the first case cited by the plaintiff, the court held that in a summary process action a counterclaim for a declaratory judgment and money damages could not be interposed, and any equitable grounds to stay the proceedings required a "resort to equity for relief." Atlantic Refining Co. v. O'Keefe,
In the present case, the court was correct in considering the merits of the defendants' estoppel defense. A waiver of the forfeiture of the breach of covenant to pay rent was a proper defense in a summary process action before the Justice Court and the Court of Common Pleas. Fort Orange Barbering Co. *537
v. New Haven Hotel Co.,
Finally the legislature has given the recently established housing court in the judicial district of Hartford-New Britain the authority to consider as "`housing matters' . . . [a]ll actions for . . . relief arising out of the parties' relationship as landlord and tenant or owner and occupant." General Statutes
The defendants' estoppel defense was not successful below because the court found no "conscious intention" on the part of the plaintiff to induce a late *538
tender of the September rent. The defendants' second claimed error is that the court improperly required them to prove the plaintiff's conscious intention in order to prevail on their estoppel defense. The notion that an equitable estoppel requires proof of actual intention to mislead or a deceitful purpose has been expressly rejected in this state. Goldberg v. Parker,
The first essential element of estoppel is "that one party must do or say something which is intended or calculated to induce another to believe in the existence of certain facts and to act on that *539
belief . . . ."(Emphasis added.) Bozzi v. Bozzi,
The conduct of the plaintiff, however, in accepting late payments of the rent for the three preceding months could not reasonably have been expected to induce a belief on the part of the defendants that the September rent might properly be paid by the eighteenth day of the month. The evidence does not indicate that any of the payments for previous months were made so late. The defendants could not reasonably have assumed that the plaintiff would grant them an indulgence greater than the earlier ones.
Furthermore, there is a question of the appropriate duties of the parties. The defendants do not base their estoppel defense on any representation by the plaintiff, but rather on his conduct of accepting without comment the late tenders of rent in June, July and August. It is a fundamental rule that a person claiming an estoppel by conduct must show that he exercised due diligence to know the truth, and that he was destitute not only of knowledge of the true state of things, but also of any convenient or available means of acquiring such knowledge. Dupuis v. Submarine Base Credit Union, Inc.,
In a case where silence is the conduct relied upon to give rise to the estoppel, the existence of circumstances which impose a duty upon the one claimed *540
to be estopped to disclose the fact which is known is essential. But there is no duty to speak where the facts are equally within the knowledge of both parties or where the one claiming the estoppel, though he has not in fact equal knowledge, has convenient and available means of acquiring it. State v. American News Co.,
In this case, the defendants were fully aware that with the statutory grace period; General Statutes
Even if we were to assume that the court erred when it required proof of conscious intention, and that the plaintiff had a duty to contact the defendants, the defendants still had to prove reliance, the second element of estoppel. They were bound to show that they were influenced by the plaintiffs conduct and changed their position or did some act to their injury which they otherwise would not have done. Bozzi v. Bozzi, supra.
The defendants' third claimed error is that the necessary reliance existed contrary to the court's conclusion. The testimony of the defendants, however, indicates that their late tender of rent in September was due to other, more pressing bills, and not because of the plaintiffs silent acceptance of the rent in the previous three months.
There is no error.
In this opinion SHEA and BIELUCH, Js., concurred.