Supreme Court of Connecticut
Frankie White v. J. William Burns
January 2, 1990213 Conn. 307
Summary
The Supreme Court of Connecticut affirmed summary judgment for the commissioner of transportation, holding that an action under General Statutes § 13a-144 requires proof that the defective highway was the sole proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries. Rejecting the plaintiffs' invitation to overrule nearly seventy years of precedent, the court concluded that the statute's plain language, its subrogation clause, its purposes, and decades of legislative acquiescence all sustain the sole proximate cause standard first announced in Bartram v. Sharon and applied to the state statute in Perrotti v. Bennett, and that stare decisis does not compel departure because Perrotti was correctly decided.