Your Mansion Real Estate, LLC v. RCN Capital Funding, LLC

Citations

• 206 Conn. App. 316

Syllabus

The defendant, a mortgage servicing company, appealed from the trial court's judgment in favor of the plaintiff, a property owner, finding that the defendant violated the mortgage release statute (§ 49-8) by failing to provide a timely release of the plaintiff's mortgage. The defendant received a payoff of the mortgage from the plaintiff, along with a demand that specifically cited and quoted the statutory damages provisions of § 49-8 (c). Held: 1. The defendant could not prevail on its claim that the trial court erred in failing to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint on the ground that the plaintiff did not have standing because the plaintiff did not incur actual damages, and, therefore, was not aggrieved; the defendant acknowledged that it had received a proper demand under § 49-8 and failed to provide the required release to the plaintiff, the plaintiff was entitled to a release after satisfying the mortgage, it made the proper demand for the release, the defendant received that demand, and the defendant failed to provide the release within the statutory sixty days, and, pursuant to the plain language of the statute, the plaintiff was a statutorily aggrieved party. 2. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in sustaining the plaintiff's objection to certain questions the defendant asked of its corporate witness concerning whether there existed a common practice whereby borrowers recontact the defendant if they have not timely received a requested § 49-8 (c) release, as the trial court correctly determined that this evidence was not relevant; the defendant's attempt to shift the responsibility to the plaintiff for the defendants' own failure to comply with § 49-8 was unmoving, the fact that the defendant admitted that it customarily fails to comply with § 49-8 did not mean that its responsibil- ity to comply then shifted to the mortgagor to repeatedly remind the defendant that it had a statutory obligation, and, whether others provided the defendant with such a