Legal Memorandum: Excluding otherwise relevant evidence

Issue: Under Colorado Rules of Evidence, when may relevant evidence be excluded from testimony?

Connecticut Practice Book Section 10-5 provides information for the imposition and calculation of attorney fees as sanctions. The Rule states:

Any allegation or denial made without reasonable cause and found untrue shall subject the party pleading the same to the payment of such reasonable expenses, to be taxed by the judicial authority, as may have been necessarily incurred by the other party by reason of such untrue pleading; provided that no expenses for counsel fees shall be taxed exceeding $500 for any one offense. Such expenses shall be taxed against the offending party whether that party prevails in the action or not.

Section 10-5 of the Connecticut Practice Book (2015).

In Durkin Village Plainville, LLC v. Cunningham, the trial court was found to have not committed an abuse of discretion in granting plaintiff’s motion for costs.

The court’s award was made pursuant to Practice Book § 10-5. That provision authorizes "sanctions for filing substantive factual allegations or denials of substantive factual allegations without reasonable cause, when those allegations or denials are found to be untrue."  "[T]he task of determining whether sanctions should be imposed is inherently fact bound, and requires carefully circumscribed discretion to be exercised by the trial court…. Good faith pleading must be judged in the light of all the circumstances existing at the time the pleading was filed." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) We review a trial court’s award of costs under Practice Book § 10-5 for an abuse of discretion. […]