The plaintiff owner of a mobile home park sought, by way of summary
process, to regain possession of certain premises leased to the defendant
in connection with the defendant’s alleged nonpayment of rent. The
defendant alleged several special defenses, including that the notice to
quit was legally insufficient, that certain charges assessed by the plaintiff
were improperly treated as part of her rent and thereby improperly
increased the amount of her arrearage, and that the plaintiff had misap-
plied a payment to the defendant’s arrearage rather than to her current
monthly rental obligation. The trial court rendered a judgment of posses-
sion in favor of the plaintiff, from which the defendant appealed to this
court. She claimed, inter alia, that the trial court lacked subject matter
jurisdiction due to the legal insufficiency of the notice to quit. Held:
1. The defendant could not prevail on her claim that the notice to quit was
legally insufficient because it failed to inform her clearly of her statutory
(§ 21-80) right to avoid eviction by paying the total arrearage due within
thirty days of receipt; the notice to quit clearly specified the total arrear-
age due and adequately informed the defendant of her right to avoid
eviction by paying the total arrearage due within thirty days of receipt,
and the disclaimer in the notice to quit that any partial payments would
be accepted for use and occupancy only and not for rent was substan-
tially similar to the use and occupancy disclaimer set forth in the general
summary process statute (§ 47a-23 [e]), which applied to mobile home
parks pursuant to § 21-80 (a), and, therefore, was not misleading or
ambiguous.
2. The defendant could not prevail on her claim that the trial court improperly
determined that it did not need to decide her second special defense,
in which she alleged that the plaintiff improperly imposed customer
service charges for utilities as rent and that the plaintiff’s charges for
utilities in excess of the defendant’s usage were illegal and could not
serve as a basis for an eviction for nonpayment of rent: that court, which
concluded that it did not need to find that the surcharges for the utilities
were excessive or against public policy because, even if they were not
enforced, there would still be an arrearage at the time that the notice
to quit was served, in effect rejected the defendant’s second special
defense as a basis for attacking the legal sufficiency of the notice to
quit; moreover, on the basis of the plain and unambiguous language of
the parties’ renewal rental agreement and the accompanying documents
related to the defendant’s billing, the customer service charges were
properly included as a component of the rent billed to the defendant,
and, therefore, the past arrearage due in the notice to quit was correct.
3. The trial court properly rejected the defendant’s claim in her second
special defense that the notice to quit included improper water charges
and, thus, was legally insufficient, which was based on her claim that
the plaintiff had engaged in illegal submetering in violation of the state
regulation (§ 16-11-55) that requires that submetering of water be
approved by the state Public Utilities Commission; that court properly
determined that the plaintiff submetered water from the Metropolitan
District Commission, which, by the plain language of the relevant statute
(§ 16-1 [a] [6]), was not subject to that regulation, and, therefore, the
notice to quit was not legally insufficient on that basis.
4. The trial court properly determined that the defendant’s April, 2014 pay-
ment was correctly applied to a past arrearage that was due rather
than to her current monthly rental obligation; because each monthly
statement given to the defendant included any balance remaining from
the previous month, and because the defendant often tendered payments
exceeding her monthly rental obligation, which lowered her past arrear-
age due, it was clear from the parties’ course of performance that the
defendant was aware that her payments were applied first to her total
arrearage due and then to her current rental obligation.
Argued February 1—officially released August 1, 2017 Procedural History