Any person who commences and prosecutes any civil action or complaint against another, in his own name or the name of others, or asserts a defense to any civil action or complaint commenced and prosecuted by another (1) without probable cause, shall pay such other person double damages, or (2) without probable cause, and with a malicious intent unjustly to vex and trouble such other person, shall pay him treble damages.
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-568
Damages for groundless or vexatious suit or defense
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Connecticut v. Doehr (1991)
Most recently applied in Tibbetts v. Stempel (January 2005)
(1949 Rev., S. 8309; P.A. 82-160, S. 234; P.A. 86-338, S. 9; P.A. 87-526, S. 1, 5; P.A. 93-191, S. 3, 4.) History: P.A. 82-160 substituted “civil action” for “suit”; P.A. 86-338…
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Connecticut General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Connecticut statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.