Three Plaintiffs Against the State Will Get a New Day in Court

A four-year-old in foster care who wandered away and drowned in a pond. A woman whose aggressive form of cancer was misdiagnosed as benign at the University of Connecticut. And a teenage girl who died after falling 15 to 20 feet at a waterfall at Enders State Forest in Granby.

The legislature's judiciary committee on Friday took the fairly unusual step of permitting the family members of all three victims to file lawsuits against the state.

Common-law precedents dating to feudal times shield the state from liability in most cases; those seeking to sue the state must get the permission of the claims commissioner first.

But legislature can intervene and, in each of the three cases discussed Friday, lawmakers decided that the plaintiffs deserve the chance to press on in their quest to sue the state.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/politics/capitol-watch/hc-three-plaintiffs-against-the-state-will-get-a-new-day-in-court-20170331-story.html