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162 Conn. 626

Bitonti v. Tucker

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided March 10, 1972

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1972-03-10

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“`established policy to allow great latitude to a litigant who, either by choice or necessity, represents himself in legal proceedings, so far as such latitude is consistent with the just right of any adverse party.'”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including Hudson v. Administrator, No. Cv 00-0598587s (Dec. 15, 2000), O'Neill v. Novak, No. Fa89 0103133 S (Sep. 7, 1993)

Relies on Banca Commerciale Italiana Trust Co. v. Westchester Artistic Works, Inc. · Higgins v. Hartford County Bar Asso.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1972-03-10

How this case has been cited

Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently December 2000 · most notably Conservation Commission v. Price (1984), Hartford National Bank & Trust Co. v. Tucker (1979)

34 state decisions

1201972198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Per Curiam.

¶1The plaintiff recovered a judgment against the defendant in an action resulting from a stairway fall on the defendant’s premises. After the trial court filed its memorandum of decision finding the issues for the plaintiff, counsel who had represented the defendant on the trial of the case was permitted to withdraw his appearance and the defendant, acting pro se, appealed to this court from the judgment rendered. As is not unusual in such circumstances, where an appeal is attempted by a layman who is without legal training and unskilled in legal practice and procedure, the appeal claims innumerable errors on the part of the trial court, including assigned error in seventy-seven paragraphs relating to the draft finding and finding of the court.

¶2*627In accordance with our established policy to allow great latitude to a litigant who, either by choice or necessity, represents himself in legal proceedings, so far as such latitude is consistent with the just rights of any adverse party, we have carefully examined and considered each of the claims of the defendant so far as it is possible to understand them. See Higgins v. Hartford County Bar Assn., 109 Conn. 690, 692, 145 A. 20. If there is merit to any of them, we have been unable to discover it and it would serve no useful purpose to discuss them seriatim.

¶3There is no error.

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