Conn. Gen. Stat. § 4-279

This is the official text of Conn. Gen. Stat. § 4-279, part of Connecticut’s Gen. Stat — part of the compiled statutory law of Connecticut, published by the state as "Gen. Stat." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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Sec. 4-279. Civil action when Attorney General declines to proceed. Division of proceeds. Attorneys' fees and costs. Stay of discovery.

Official statutory text

(b) A person bringing an action under this section or settling the claim shall receive an amount which the court decides is reasonable for collecting the civil penalty and damages. The amount shall be not less than twenty-five per cent or more than thirty per cent of the proceeds of the action or settlement and shall be paid out of such proceeds. Such person shall also receive an amount for reasonable expenses that the court finds to have been necessarily incurred, plus reasonable attorneys' fees and costs. All such expenses, fees and costs shall be awarded against the defendant.

(c) If a defendant prevails in the action conducted under this section and the court finds that the claim of the person bringing the action was clearly frivolous, clearly vexatious or brought primarily for purposes of harassment, the court may award reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses to the defendant.

(d) Irrespective of whether the Attorney General proceeds with the action, upon request and showing by the Attorney General that certain motions or requests for discovery by a person bringing the action would interfere with the state's investigation or prosecution of a criminal or civil matter arising out of the same facts, the court may stay such discovery for a period of not more than sixty days from the date of the order of the stay. Such a showing shall be conducted in camera. The court may extend the stay for an additional sixty-day period upon a further showing in camera that the state has pursued the criminal or civil investigation or proceedings with reasonable diligence and any proposed discovery in the civil action will interfere with the ongoing criminal or civil investigation or proceedings. For the purposes of this subsection, the Chief State's Attorney or state's attorney for the appropriate judicial district may appear to explain to the court the potential impact of such discovery on a pending criminal investigation or prosecution.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.