Lawrence v. State Board of Education (Concurrence)
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****************************************************** The officially released date that appears near the beginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be published in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the beginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the officially released date appearing in the opinion. In no event will any such motions be accepted before the officially released date. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the electronic version of an opinion and the print version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest print version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears on the Commission on Official Legal Publications Electronic Bulletin Board Service and in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publications, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. ****************************************************** LAWRENCE v. STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION CONCURRENCE LAVINE, J., concurring. I concur with the majority opinion, however, I write separately to note the limits of our ruling. Exceptions to the doctrine of sovereign immunity are few and narrowly construed under our jurisprudence. C. R. Klewin Northeast, LLC v. Fleming, 284 Conn. 250, 258, 932 A.2d 1053 (2007). Connecticut has a common-law exception to sovereign immunity for claims in an action for declaratory or injunctive relief [if] the state officer or officers against whom such relief is sought acted in excess of statutory authority, or pursuant to an unconstitutional statute. (Emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted.) DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Law, 284 Conn. 701, 712, 937 A.2d 675 (2007). In this case, the plaintiff, Wilbert Lawrence, seeks rescission of a contract. The trial court found that the state did not waive its sovereign immunity or consent to this suit through the claims commissioner. The court stated that [e]ven if this court were to assume that the plaintiff is seeking declaratory relief in the form of rescission of a contract, the plaintiff has failed to meet his pleading requirements because he has failed to clearly allege an incursion upon a constitutionally protected interest and because he has failed to substantially allege that [the defendant Mark K. McQuillan], in his official capacity, engaged in wrongful conduct to achieve an illegal purpose in excess of his statutory authority. I emphasize that the trial court assumed but did not decide that the plaintiff was seeking declaratory relief in the form of rescission. The majority neither endorses nor rejects that assumption; it does not address it. In my opinion, therefore, the majority opinion does not stand for the proposition that, in this jurisdiction, an action seeking rescission is the equivalent of an action for declaratory relief for purposes of sovereign immunity analysis, nor should it be cited as authority for that proposition, nor used as a means to bypass the claims commissioner.
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