On March 6, 2026, the Connecticut Appellate Court released two opinions on the same day that were wins for Halloran Sage clients, a rare double-header event, and a sweep for our clients, in one case a regional animal control department, in the other a church.
In the first case, Northeastern Connecticut Council of Governments Animal Services Ex Rel. Jennifer Hutchins v. Tracy Donovan, A.C. 48462, the Defendant had been the subject of an animal welfare civil action under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 22-329a following the seizure of one hundred three animals including ninety-six dogs by our client, the plaintiff animal control officers, from her property in Woodstock; in a statutory civil custody proceeding prosecuted by Halloran Sage attorney Carrie Burnsed, the Defendant was found by the trial court to have neglected and/or cruelly treated the animals and the court vested custody in the plaintiff.
Defendant appealed, arguing that because the probable cause finding for the animal control officers’ search and seizure warrant application allegedly relied in part on a warrantless search – in the form of a glance through a window of the house revealing many crated filthy dogs during a welfare check – then all evidence produced from the seizure, meaning all evidence of the conditions of the dogs themselves, should have been excluded from trial as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” On appeal, Halloran Sage appellate attorney Thomas Plotkin successfully argued that the exclusionary rule for Fourth Amendment violations does not apply in most civil proceedings, including the civil animal welfare statute, except for quasi-criminal proceedings where the purpose is punishment of wrongdoing; by contrast, the purpose of the animal welfare statute is remedial and not punitive, the protection of a vulnerable and voiceless class, akin to child welfare proceedings, where the exclusionary rule has also been held not to apply.
In the second win for a Halloran Sage client that day, The Lee Memorial Methodist Church of Norwich, Connecticut v. City of Norwich, A.C. 47726, the client Church was denied an exemption from property taxes for an unaffiliated, for-profit daycare facility leasing space on the premises, despite the fact that Connecticut General Statutes § 12-81(14) exempts from taxes church owned real property “exclusively used as a school, a daycare facility, a Connecticut nonprofit camp or recreational facility for religious purposes, a parish house, an orphan asylum, a home for children, a thrift shop, the proceeds of which are used for charitable purposes, a reformatory or an infirmary or for two or more of such purposes[.]” The Church appealed to the Superior Court, which sustained the appeal on the grounds that the plain meaning of the statute set no limitation to such exemption on the nature of the daycare operating on Church premises, i.e. that it cannot be for profit or secular in nature. The municipality appealed to the Appellate Court, making half-a-dozen arguments based on sundry means of textual analysis that the statute could not possibly mean what it said. But the Appellate Court agreed with Halloran Sage appellate attorney Thomas Plotkin’s argument that the plain meaning of the words of the statutory exemption controlled, and therefore the Superior Court got it right the first time, affirming the judgment.