## Facts

- An elderly, childless widow living alone owned a valuable home and did not want to sell.
- A married couple befriended her and allegedly persuaded her to sell by promising to build a cottage on the property so she could live there for life and be treated as family.
- The buyers arranged for their own lawyer to represent the seller in the real-estate transaction.
- On the day of closing, the buyers arrived without warning to take the seller to the closing; she was ill.
- At closing, the seller asked whether she should have her own attorney and was reassured that the lawyer would “take care of all of the parties.”
- The seller did not read the closing documents and they were not read to her; she signed them.
- The closing documents allegedly omitted any provision securing the seller’s promised life estate or continued right to occupy the property.
- After closing, the buyers allegedly treated the seller poorly and withheld details about construction; a small structure was built that could not accommodate her furnishings.
- The seller brought an eleven-count complaint; counts against the attorney included malpractice, recklessness, fraudulent misrepresentation, CUTPA, and breach of fiduciary duty.
- The attorney moved to strike the recklessness, CUTPA, and breach-of-fiduciary-duty counts for legal insufficiency.

## Issues

1. Whether the complaint alleged facts that, if true, plausibly stated attorney “recklessness” distinct from negligence or malpractice.
2. Whether alleged misconduct by an attorney in a transactional representation could fall within “trade or commerce” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” under CUTPA.
3. Whether the alleged conflicted representation and failure to protect the client’s interests sufficiently stated a claim for breach of fiduciary duty.

## Decision

- The court treated the motion as testing the legal sufficiency of the pleaded facts, taken as true.
- The court denied the motion to strike, permitting the challenged counts against the attorney to proceed past the pleading stage.

## Legal Principles

- On a motion to strike, the court assumes the truth of well-pleaded facts and asks only whether those facts state a legally sufficient cause of action.
- Allegations that an attorney undertook to represent a client in a conflicted transaction, discouraged independent counsel, and failed to secure essential protections may support a fiduciary-duty claim at the pleading stage.
- Attorney conduct may support a recklessness theory when the allegations describe more than inadvertence and instead suggest conscious disregard of a substantial risk of harm to the client.
- In appropriate circumstances, allegations concerning an attorney’s business-facing, transactional conduct may be pleaded as a CUTPA claim when the complaint plausibly alleges unfair or deceptive practices.

## Conclusion

The court allowed the plaintiff’s claims against the attorney to move forward on the pleadings, holding that the complaint adequately alleged theories of recklessness, CUTPA liability, and breach of fiduciary duty arising from the attorney’s role in a conflicted real-estate transaction involving a vulnerable client.


Anderson v. O’Brien, No. CV-XX-XXXXXXX, 2005 WL 3624382 (Conn. Super. Ct. Dec. 14, 2005)