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215 Conn. 350

Sidney v. DeVries

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided June 12, 1990

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1990-06-12

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“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.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Clarke Builders, Inc. v. Allen, No. Cv 98 0166183 (Jun. 18, 2001)

“[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.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 1993 Conn. Super. Ct. 4053 - Brothers v. Goldman, No. 296569 (Apr. 22, 1993)

Relies on Barrett Builders v. Miller · Burns v. Koellmer · 18 Conn. App. 581 - Sidney v. DeVries

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1990-06-12

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

670199020002010decided

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 sole issue in this appeal is whether a contractor who has failed to comply with the requirements of the Home Improvement Act; General Statutes § 20-418 et seq.; can nonetheless recover in quasi contract by demonstrating unjust enrichment1 on the *352part of the homeowner for whom the contractor has performed work. The defendant, Rex K. Collum, a general contractor,* 2 raised this claim as one count of a counterclaim to an action brought by the plaintiffs, Judith and Selig Sidney, for defective remodeling work at their home. The trial court found for the defendant in the plaintiffs’ cause of action, and for the plaintiffs in the action on the defendant’s counterclaim. In the defendant’s subsequent appeal to the Appellate Court, that court upheld the judgment of the trial court. Sidney v. DeVries, 18 Conn. App. 581, 559 A.2d 1145 (1989). We granted the defendant’s petition for certification; Sidney v. DeVries, 212 Conn. 810, 564 A.2d 1071 (1989); and now affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.

¶2The record and the pleadings disclose the following by way of background. In February, 1983, at the request of the plaintiffs, the defendant, a self-employed contractor and carpenter, began to perform renovation work on the plaintiffs’ house in Woodbury. In October, 1983, dissatisfied with the defendant’s performance, the plaintiffs terminated their relationship with him. At that point, the plaintiffs had paid the defendant $11,800. The defendant alleged in his counterclaim that the materials and labor that he had furnished to the plaintiffs had a reasonable value of $39,650 and claimed a right to recover the balance of $27,850.

¶3*353The trial court found that, although certain documents had been exchanged between the parties, “there is in evidence no written contract containing the entire agreement between the owner and the contractor. It is impossible to harmonize the agreements in evidence to form a contract containing the entire agreement between the parties since they are full of contradictory terms. Additionally, no writing exists which clearly sets out the scope of the work, extras, or many other details necessary to a complete agreement.” Absent a complete written agreement, the court held that General Statutes § 20-4293 barred the defendant’s recovery on the counterclaim insofar as it alleged a breach of an oral contract or a claim in quasi contract. On the plaintiffs’ cause of action, the court concluded that they also could not recover because they had failed to meet their burden of establishing the terms of their contract and its breach by the defendant.

¶4Only the defendant filed an appeal to the Appellate Court. In rejecting the defendant’s oral contract claim, the Appellate Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling “that the agreement between the parties fell within the Home Improvement Act and that the defendant’s counterclaim, relying on an oral contract, was barred by General Statutes § 20-429 (a).” Sidney v. DeVries, *354supra, 18 Conn. App. 588. The Appellate Court also rejected the defendant’s claim that he had a right to recover on a theory of quantum meruit.4 We granted the defendant’s petition for certification, limited to the following question: “Does Connecticut General Statutes § 20-429 bar a home improvement contractor from recovering against a homeowner under a claim of quantum meruit arising out of an oral contract?” Sidney v. DeVries, supra, 212 Conn. 810.

¶5The question that we certified in this case was fully examined and discussed in Barrett Builders v. Miller, 215 Conn. 316, 576 A.2d 455 (1990). We there concluded that, absent proof of bad faith on the part of the homeowner, § 20-429 does not permit recovery in quasi contract by a contractor who has failed to comply with the statutory requirement that “[n]o home improvement contract shall be valid unless it is in writing and unless it contains the entire agreement between the owner and the contractor.” That precedent is dis-positive of this appeal.

¶6The judgment of the Appellate Gourt is affirmed.

¶7In this opinion Peters, C. J., Glass and Hull, Js., concurred.

¶8 The defendant has at various times denominated the relevant count in his counterclaim against the plaintiff as sounding in quasi contract, quantum meruit and unjust enrichment. Since these three theories, each based *352upon common law principles of restitution, are all noncontractual actions by which a party may recover despite the absence of a valid contract; see Burns v. Koellmer, 11 Conn. App. 375, 384, 527 A.2d 1210 (1987); G. Palmer, “History of Restitution in Anglo-American Law,” c. 3, vol. X, Restitution-Unjust Enrichment and Negotiorum Gestio, International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (P. Schlechtriem Chief Ed.) pp. 32-33 (1989); we will refer to the theories collectively as quasi contract claims.

¶9 The named defendant, Philip N. DeVries, is another contractor. The plaintiffs and DeVries have filed reciprocal withdrawals of their actions against each other.

¶10 General Statutes (Rev. to 1987) § 20-429 provides in pertinent part: “contract to be in writing, negative option provisions prohibited, owner to receive copy, required provisions, (a) No home improvement contract shall be valid unless it is in writing and unless it contains the entire agreement between the owner and the contractor. . . .

¶11“(c) The contractor shall provide and deliver to the owner, without charge, a completed copy of the home improvement contract at the time such contract is executed.”

¶12Prior to 1986, the provision now codified as subsection (c) was subsection (b). See Public Acts 1986, No. 86-94. The substance of the provision was not changed in the recodification. Amendments to § 20-429, in 1988, which added several other required provisions for a valid contract; Public Acts 1988, No. 88-269, § 9, No. 88-364, §§ 108, 123; are not relevant to our analysis since the transactions in this case took place prior to the effective date of the amendments.

¶13 In the Appellate Court, the defendant also argued that the Home Improvement Act was not properly before the court because the plaintiffs had not invoked this act in their special defense to the defendant’s counterclaim. This contention, which the Appellate Court rejected on the ground of waiver; Sidney v. DeVries, 18 Conn. App. 581, 587, 559 A.2d 1145 (1989); is not at issue in this appeal.

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