The plaintiff housing authority sought, by way of summary process, to regain
possession of certain premises leased to the defendant tenant, R. R
resided with her two adult children on the premises when her son, C,
was arrested on another property owned by the plaintiff and charged
with certain drug related offenses. Thereafter, the plaintiff served R
with a pretermination notice, as required by statute (§ 47a-15), informing
her of its intent to terminate her lease for violations of the prohibition
against illegal drug related criminal activity on its property. In accor-
dance with the plaintiff’s grievance procedures, R requested and received
an informal meeting with M, the deputy director of the housing authority,
who agreed that the plaintiff would not evict R at that time, but issued
a written notice that any future arrest of C would result in the commence-
ment of eviction proceedings. Approximately four months later, C was
arrested on the premises at R’s apartment and charged with similar drug
related offenses. The plaintiff subsequently commenced the present
summary process action by serving a notice to quit. R filed a motion to
dismiss on the ground that she had not been served with a pretermination
notice prior to service of the notice to quit, as required by § 47a-15, and
that the court therefore lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Pursuant to
§ 47a-15, a landlord, prior to the commencement of a summary process
action, is required to deliver a written notice to the tenant specifying
the acts or omissions constituting the breach and that the rental
agreement shall terminate upon a date not less than fifteen days after
receipt of the notice, and the landlord may terminate the rental
agreement in accordance with the provisions of the summary process
statute (§ 47a-23) if substantially the same act or omission for which
notice was given recurs within six months. The trial court concluded
that the plaintiff was not required to provide a second pretermination
notice under the circumstances of this case, denied the motion to dis-
miss, and rendered judgment of possession in favor of the plaintiff, from
which R appealed to this court. Held that the trial court properly found
that the pretermination notice that the plaintiff sent following C’s first
arrest satisfied the clear and unambiguous requirements of § 47a-15: the
pretermination notice specified the acts or omissions that constituted
the breach of the lease, namely, C’s drug related activity, and where,
as here, C was arrested for a second instance of drug related activity
less than four months after the pretermination notice was sent and C’s
arrest involved substantially the same act or omission for which the
pretermination notice had been given, pursuant to § 47a-15 the plaintiff
was not required to send a second pretermination notice prior to com-
mencing eviction proceedings and could rely on the pretermination
notice that was served on R approximately four months prior to the
service of the notice to quit; moreover, although R claimed that, pursuant
to federal regulations, the decision of M at the informal meeting not to
pursue eviction at that time negated the effect of the pretermination
notice and conclusively resolved the question of whether the plaintiff
could evict her on the basis of that notice, the meeting with M was not
a formal hearing that resulted in a decision by a hearing officer, which
would have been binding on the plaintiff under federal regulations but
was never rendered under the facts of this case, as M, the deputy director
of the housing authority, was not an impartial hearing officer within
the meaning of the federal regulations and R requested and received an
informal meeting, not a formal hearing, as those terms are defined in
those regulations.
Argued September 12—officially released November 21, 2017