2026-09-09 · Connecticut · Courts

Owners who built without submitting plans forfeited any argument that approval was unreasonably withheld, the Connecticut Appellate Court held in a decision released February 3, 2026 — because the parties had stipulated no approval was ever sought, the court never reached the reasonableness question at all.¹

Casner v. Roberts, AC 47463, 237 Conn. App. 515, is not an association case. The approval right belonged to a subdivision developer under a restrictive covenant running with the land, not to an architectural review committee. The doctrine, however, is the one Connecticut associations enforce every week.

What happened

Lot owners built a six-car commercial garage and operated a roofing business from it. A covenant required prior plan approval. They did not seek it. The developer sued to enforce.

The panel — Suarez, Seeley and Eveleigh, Js. — affirmed in part and reversed in part.¹

The holdings that carry across to associations

Build first and the reasonableness question disappears. The covenant's terms about a permissible residential garage were “clear and unambiguous,” and because the parties stipulated the garage was built without any plan approval, the court never had to decide whether approval would have been unreasonably withheld. The defence an owner would ordinarily raise was unavailable because the process was never triggered.

The COVID orders extended the clock. The three-year limitation in § 52-575a did not bar the action. It was suspended by Executive Order No. 7G roughly seven and a half months after the developer learned of the construction, and suit was brought less than eighteen months after Executive Order No. 10A lifted the suspension.

A late laches defence stays out. Refusing to allow laches to be pleaded late was within the trial court's discretion.

1. Casner v. Roberts, AC 47463, 237 Conn. App. 515 — slip opinion, Connecticut Appellate Court (officially released February 3, 2026) ↩