The plaintiff, Ussbasy Garcia, sought to recover damages for personal injuries sustained when she slipped and fell on a staircase outside of her apartment building. Garcia v. Cohen, 335 Conn. 3, 225 A.3d 653, 2020 Conn. LEXIS 69. Plaintiff claimed that the defendants were negligent in failing to keep the steps of the staircase free of dirt and sand and by allowing the surface to become pitted, worn and uneven. Defendants raised the Special Defense of contributory negligence, stating that it had delegated tasks, such as snow removal, to a third party. At trial, the Court declined to instruct the jury on the nondelegable duty to maintain doctrine or to submit plaintiff’s proposed interrogatories referring to same. A verdict was returned for the defendants and the plaintiff appealed the Court’s decision as to jury instruction.
The case was appealed and eventually reached the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts that the “General Verdict Rule” barred review of the issue and that another independent error needed to be established to overturn the jury’s verdict.
Under the general verdict rule, if a jury renders a general verdict for one party, and [the party raising a claim of error did not request] interrogatories, an appellate court will presume that the jury found every issue in favor of the prevailing party….Thus, in a case in which the general verdict rule operates, if any ground for the verdict is proper, the verdict must stand; only if every ground is improper does the verdict fall….Id. at 10-11.
According to the Court, the claims of negligence and contributory negligence are so intertwined with the plaintiff’s nondelegable duty charge claim on appeal that the Rule does not bar the review of this issue. The Court found sufficient that plaintiff’s submission of interrogatories and her objection upon the court’s refusal to submit them to the jury as a defense to the application of the general verdict rule, not requiring an independent claim of error. Id at 6.
Additionally, the Court found that the plaintiff renewed her objection to the court’s denial of her request to submit her proposed interrogatories to the jury after the court had charged the jury on the applicable law. The Court cited evidence that plaintiff filed her interrogatories; addressed the court’s decision not to submit them to the jury on the record; and raised her objection again after the court had charged the jury on the applicable law. See Id. at 28.
Analyzing this decision, the Court has reinforced its principal that formal objections to the court’s procedure as to charges to the jury are not necessary. As long as the record is clear as to the party’s position on appeal, the objection is preserved for review by the subsequent appellate court, making the general verdict rule inapplicable in those instances. Therefore, it emphasizes the importance of a clear record at trial, even if a party does not necessarily utter the words “I object” during the proceedings.