Connecticut court: a broad release with an association barred later claims against its directors personally
Connecticut court: a broad release with an association barred later claims against its directors personally
2026-09-09 · Connecticut · Courts
A general release given to a Connecticut association in settling a lien foreclosure barred the same owners from later suing its directors personally over an accounting, the Appellate Court held in a decision released March 25, 2025 — and the sanction of the directors' attorney's fees against them was upheld.1
DiSpazio v. Pacapelli, AC 47007, 231 Conn. App. 589, is a caution about what a settlement document does to claims nobody has thought of yet.
What happened
Maltby Street, LLC was a dock unit owner in West Cove Marina Coop, Inc., a cooperative association. West Cove had foreclosed a § 47-258 statutory lien against it in 2013. That litigation settled in 2015 with a release running to West Cove “and [its] officers, directors, shareholders, agents, and legal representatives.”
In 2019 the plaintiffs sued the president and four officers and directors individually, alleging intentional and negligent misrepresentation, statutory theft under § 52-564 with its treble damages, and conversion. The gravamen was that the board had refused their “requests to the defendants to provide them [with] an accounting and a synopsis of West Cove's records” and had misdistributed sale proceeds.
The panel — Elgo, Westbrook and Bear, Js., opinion by Judge Westbrook — affirmed summary judgment for the directors.1
The two holdings
The release reached claims that had not yet surfaced. The 2015 release barred the later claims because they were “inchoate claims that were contemplated at the time of the release, although they may not have manifested themselves at that time.”
The fee sanction did not require bad faith. Attorney's fees under Practice Book § 1-25 were proper because the claims were “without a basis in law and fact.” No separate finding of bad faith was necessary.
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