Hartford v. McKeever — 10/20/2014

The primary issue that we must resolve in this certified appeal is whether the Appellate Court properly determined as a matter of law that the plaintiff, the city of Hartford, as assignee of the note and mortgage executed by the defendant…did not take the note and mortgage subject to the defendant’s affirmative claims against the assignor, or, instead, the Appellate Court should have recognized and applied an equitable exception to this rule because the assignor or its predecessors had received overpayments on the note on the plaintiff’s behalf. The plaintiff, as the assignee of a promissory note and mortgage executed by the defendant, brought an action to foreclose the mortgage. The defendant filed a five count counterclaim seeking, inter alia, an accounting of amounts paid pursuant to the note and recoupment of any excess amounts paid, including amounts that he had paid to the entity that had assigned the note and mortgage to the plaintiff and that entity’s predecessors in interest. The trial court rendered judgment in favor of the defendant on his counterclaim and awarded him damages of $195,909. The plaintiff appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the Appellate Court, which reversed the judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings. Hartford v. McKeever, 139 Conn. App. 277, 288, 55 A.3d 787 (2012). We then granted the defendant’s petition for certification to appeal to this court. Hartford v. McKeever, 307 Conn. 956, 59 A.3d 1191 (2013). The issue that we must address on appeal is whether the Appellate Court properly determined that the plaintiff, as the most recent assignee and current holder of the defendant’s note, could not be held liable to repay the defendant for sums that were overpaid on the note before it was assigned to the plaintiff. We answer this question in the affirmative and, therefore, affirm the judgment of the Appellate Court.

SC19099

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