Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities v. Board of Education of the Town of Cheshire8/31/2004
n this regard, we disagree with the defendants' reliance on our decision in Chestnut Realty, Inc. v. Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities, 201 Conn. 350, 364-66, 514 A.2d 749 (1986). In that case, the respondent realty company had discriminated against the complainant on the basis of race in 1977, in violation of the Public Accommodation Act; General Statutes § 46a-64; by refusing to permit him to purchase a subdivision lot that was for sale. Chestnut Realty, Inc. v. Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities, supra, 354. The commission, in 1983, ordered the respondent to give the complainant an option to purchase a similar lot for the 1977 sale price. Id. We affirmed the trial court's reversal of the commission's order because "the purpose of actual damages in a fair housing case is to put the plaintiff in the same position, so far as money can do it, as he would have been had there been no injury or breach of duty, that is, to compensate him for the injury actually sustained." (Emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 365. Thus, we stated that "measuring damages by the appreciation in land from the time of an alleged act of discrimination to the time of trial goes well beyond injuries actually sustained . . . [would result] in creating a windfall profit to the complainant . . . [and would be] punitive in nature . . . ." Id., 366. Chestnut Realty, Inc., cannot support the defendants' position in the present case, however. First, this is not a fair housing case. Second, the discrimination in that case was under § 46a-64, the specific public accommodation law, not § 46a-58, the general and broadly inclusive civil rights statute. Third, the commission in Chestnut Realty, Inc., did not make a general compensatory damage award under § 46a-86 (c); rather, the award was simply economic in nature, and the court was undoubtedly correct that an economic award cannot properly be punitive or result in a windfall to the complainant. Thus, the proper inquiry in Chestnut Realty, Inc., was not if the complainant was entitled to damages, but rather, how to measure those damages--and measuring damages by the appreciation in land went beyond "the damage suffered by the complainant" in that case. General Statutes § 46a-86 (c). That does not mean, however, that, in a case such as this, where there may be no economic harm, the commission may not award appropriate non-economic damages, such as emotional distress. Indeed, as we have indicated, our reasoning in Bridgeport Hospital v. Commission on Human Rights & Opportunities, supra, 232 Conn. 98, is plainly to the contrary.
The defendants' third contention is that there is nothing in the legislative history indicating a legislative intent to authorize general compensatory damages, such as emotional distress damages, under § 46a-86 (c). In this regard, the defendants focus, not on the legislative history of § 46a-86 (c), which, as we have indicated, does suggest such an intent, but, instead, on the legislative history of § 46a-58, and its statutory predecessor, General Statutes § 53-34. The short answer to this contention is that the absence of an expression in the legislative history of § 46a-58 to permit personal compensatory damages cannot survive that statute's specific inclusion, beginning in 1975, and continuing with its inclusion in the technical revision of 1980, to the list of statutory violations that will specifically permit the award of compensatory damages under § 46a-86 (c). Public Act 75-462; P.A. 80-422, § 34.
The defendants' final argument is that Ballard did not include a claim for compensatory damages, such as those for emotional distress, in his original complaint. This argument fails because a complaint to the commission
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