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PATRICIA A. WEYANT v. JOHN M. KRISTY (AC 31667)
Gruendel, Beach and Borden, Js. Argued November 10, 2010--officially released January 18, 2011

(Appeal from Superior Court, judicial district of Ansonia-Milford, Radcliffe, J.) Glenn L. Formica, for the appellant (plaintiff). Rene Gerard (defendant). Martineau, for the appellee

Opinion

PER CURIAM. The plaintiff, Patricia A. Weyant, appeals following the trial court's denial of her motion to set aside the verdict, rendered after a jury trial, in favor of the defendant, John M. Kristy. On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court abused its discretion in denying her motion to set aside the verdict. We affirm the judgment of the trial court. The jury reasonably could have found the following facts. On February 18, 2006, at approximately 7 p.m., the defendant was traveling in his car on Dunbar Road in Milford. The defendant approached a stop sign at the intersection of Dunbar Road and New Haven Avenue and came to a stop. He peered down New Haven Avenue and saw the plaintiff's car at a distance, and, believing he had ample time to proceed through the intersection before her car approached, he started to drive through the intersection. After the defendant was approximately three fourths of the way through the intersection, he noticed that the plaintiff's car was very close to him. He then accelerated his car in an attempt to get through the intersection and to avoid a collision with the plaintiff. The attempt was in vain, however, and the plaintiff's car struck the rear passenger's side of the defendant's car. The plaintiff brought a negligence action against the defendant, seeking damages for the injuries that she claimed to have sustained as a result of the accident. In her complaint, the plaintiff alleged both statutory and common-law negligence against the defendant. In his answer, the defendant both denied the allegations of negligence and asserted an affirmative defense of comparative negligence, which was denied by the plaintiff. On October 14, 2009, the jury trial commenced. On October 15, 2009, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff filed a motion to set aside the verdict, which was denied on October 29, 2009. This appeal followed. On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court abused its discretion in denying her motion to set aside the verdict because the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. Specifically, the plaintiff points to a portion of the defendant's testimony at trial: ``I was crossing New Haven Avenue, so I had stopped at the stop sign. I thought there was plenty of room for me to go, plenty of time before the next oncoming car. [I] got across the lane closer to myself, got most of the way across the opposite lane where [the plaintiff] was traveling, and I saw her headlights out of the corner of my eye coming toward me, so I attempted to accelerate to get the rest of the way through the intersection to get out of the way, and at that point she hit the passenger side . . . of my car.'' The plaintiff contends that this statement precluded the jury from returning a verdict in the

defendant's favor because he essentially admitted that he was at fault to a greater extent than the plaintiff. The defendant argues, however, that the evidence submitted to the jury supports the verdict in his favor.1 We begin by setting forth our standard of review. ``The standard of review governing our review of a trial court's denial of a motion to set aside the verdict is well settled. The trial court possesses inherent power to set aside a jury verdict [that], in the court's opinion, is against the law or the evidence. . . . [The trial court] should not set aside a verdict [when] it is apparent that there was some evidence [on] which the jury might reasonably reach [its] conclusion, and should not refuse to set it aside [when] the manifest injustice of the verdict is so plain and palpable as clearly to denote that some mistake was made by the jury in the application of legal principles. . . . Ultimately, [t]he decision to set aside a verdict entails the exercise of a broad legal discretion . . . that, in the absence of clear abuse, we shall not disturb.'' (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Costanzo v. Gray, 112 Conn. App. 614, 625

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