BRAY v. BRAY

Attorney(s) appearing for the Case

Summary process; landlord and tenant; equitable nonforfeiture; summary process action by plaintiff landlord against defendant tenant, who was his former wife, where residential lease agreement had been incorporated into parties' dissolution agreement; plaintiff sought eviction on ground of nonpayment of rent after defendant withheld payment for plaintiffs alleged failure to pay alimony, his share of parties' credit card bills and costs that defendant incurred to remedy health code violations on leased premises; whether defendant, who operated home day care business on premises, entitled under lease or by statute to withhold rent for plaintiffs failure to pay alimony or share of credit card bills; whether defendant entitled to withhold rent for costs to remedy code violations when applicable state regulation (§ 19a-87b-9) pertained to day care homes and does not implicate landlord-tenant relationship; whether defendant could prove code violation was "material hazard" within meaning of § 19a-87b-9 or that it rendered premises "uninhabitable" within meaning of statutes (§§ 47a-7[a][2] and 47a-4a) permitting withholding of rent; whether allegations and arguments of pro se defendant, who did not raise equitable defenses, could he construed as invoking equitable doctrine of nonforfeiture, where defendant withheld sums in good faith and had done so in past without objection by plaintiff, where defendant offered to pay sums due after summary process action initiated, and where defendant's loss of home and sole source of income would be substantially greater loss than plaintiff would face so as to warrant denial of possession of premises by plaintiff.

Devlin, Peters & Tarpey, LLC, Somers, for the plaintiff.

Joyce Bray, pro se, the defendant.