Sidney v. DeVries’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
2 district · 104 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 106 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably Wadia Enterprises, Inc. v. Hirschfeld (1992), Habetz v. Condon (1992)
2 district · 104 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Barrett Builders v. Miller · Burns v. Koellmer · 18 Conn. App. 581 - Sidney v. DeVries · Sidney v. DeVries
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 106 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“entire agreement between the owner and the contractor. In this case, there was no colloquy or motion concerning the HIA, but only the introduction of the noncomplying contract by the plaintiff in its effort to show that the contract was breached. It is difficult to understand the logic of prohibiting the introduction of a specific contract unless the contractor is willing to waive the result of the property owner's failure to specially plead the HIA, while at the same time recognizing the reality that the contractor must introduce the contract in order to prevail on its breach of contract cause of action. Under such an interpretation of Sidney, a contractor knowing that HIA had not been plead, would be unable to recover unless he did not introduce any contract at all, even though such a document was the basis for the work that was done by the contractor, and proceeding solely on quasi-contract grounds, and hoping that the property owner will be the party to introduce the offending contract so that the contractor will no longer be deemed to have waived the failure to plead HIA as a special defense. This would be a bizarre way to conduct a trial involving a breach of a written agreement. In any event, although the decision in Sidney was affirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court indicated in a footnote that the issue of whether the failure to plead the HIA in a special defense could be waived "is not at issue in this appeal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]n allegation of bad faith will entitle a plaintiff builder to seek recovery in quantum meruit but does not save the contract from being void. Since the contract in this case does not comply with the requirements of 20-429 and is thus void, recovery on the contract is not available to the plaintiff notwithstanding the plaintiff's allegation of the defendants' bad faith in raising the plaintiff's failure to comply with 20-429 . Therefore, any right to recovery by the plaintiff is limited to non-contractual theories, i.e., quantum meruit or unjust enrichment, and the defendants' motion for summary judgment as to count one, which sounds in breach of contract, is granted. As indicated above, the second and third counts allege theories of recovery based on quantum meruit and unjust enrichment. The Connecticut Supreme Court has stated that, "absent proof of bad faith on the part of the homeowner, 20-429 permits no recovery in quasi-contract by a contractor who has failed to comply with the statute's written requirement.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“No home improvement contract shall be valid or enforceable against an owner unless it: (1) is in writing, (2) is signed by the owner and contractor, (3) contains the entire agreement between the owner and the contractor, (4) contains the date of the transaction, (5) contains the name and address of the contractor, (6) contains a notice of the owner's cancellation rights . . ., (7) contains a starting date and completion date, and (8) is entered into by a registered salesman or registered contractor. Each change in the terms and conditions of the contract shall be in writing, and shall be signed by the owner and contractor. . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.