Opinion
FSTCV166027472S
08-17-2017
Graciela Robalino v. Marcos Antonio Robalio Rodriguez
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
Kenneth B. Povodator, J.
Background
Intra-family disputes can be bitter and nasty, and this case is no exception. The dispute centers on a condominium unit that is or was owned by the matriarch of the family, Graciela Robalino. The defendant contends that the property was lawfully conveyed to him by quitclaim deed, whereas essentially the remainder of the family, including Graciela Robalino acting through a family member with a power of attorney, claims that there was no such conveyance.
An evidentiary hearing took place on May 18, 2017, at which a number of individuals, essentially all family members, testified; a New York notary, whose seal and signature appear on the disputed deed, testified by way of deposition. The parties submitted briefs thereafter.
As something of an overlay or shadow, there are currently-pending criminal charges against the defendant, arising from this situation. A police officer testified relating to factual aspects of the case, based on the underlying investigation.
The parties tell different stories, and the court is required to resolve the wholly-incompatible positions being taken.
As will be discussed more fully below, in a literal sense, the defendant did not tell any story; he invoked his privilege against self-incrimination with respect to all substantive questions, when called as a witness by the plaintiff.
The defendant's version of events is relatively concisely stated in his post-trial memorandum, and therefore the court will recite a modestly-edited version:
On July 25, 2015, Graciela Robalino, Marcos Robalino, and Brenda Robalino were in Westchester County, New York. On July 25, 2015, Graciela Robalino went to the Office of Innocent Enaye in Portchester, New York and Executed a Quit Claim Deed of her real property transferring legal title to her son, Marcos Robalino. Innocent Enaye is a New York State Notary Public. Innocent Enaye testified that he verified the identification of Graciela Robalino with her passport. The Deed reflects same and Innocent Enaye testified that the word passport as identification written in the deed is in his handwriting. Karina Robalino testified that her grandmother requires a Spanish interpreter and that she reads documents very thoroughly prior to executing them . . . Innocent Enaye testified that he asks the signor if they know what they are signing before they sign their name that " they understand the document that they were signing it for the purpose for which it stated." Innocent Enaye testified that he provides an interpreter when a Spanish speaker needs one and that he won't do it if a Spanish speaker is not present. Innocent Enaye testified that he has a few Spanish speakers working in his office. Innocent Enaye testified that it is his notary stamp that is affixed to the Deed. Innocent Enaye testified that he signed the bottom signature and that it is his signature. Innocent Enaye testified that he wrote his name in his handwriting on the witness line. Innocent Enaye testified that Barbara DeVorce works in his Port Chester Office. Innocent Enaye testified that in his handwriting he wrote the word " 7th" referring to the month July.
The court's recollection is that the police officer testified that the notary had denied that the signature was his. The court will rely on the notary's deposition testimony. The seeming discrepancy probably is attributable to a difference in focus--as discussed below, the notary signed the document, but his name also appears on a line intended for a witness, and in that location his name was apparently printed rather than intended as a signature.
[The balance of the defendant's brief is devoted to explaining why the court should reject the contention that the signature of Graciela Robalino is a forgery or otherwise not genuine.]
The plaintiff's position is multi-faceted. First, the contention is that the events recited above, with respect to execution of the deed, could not have happened and did not happen. Thus, while there was evidence presented by the plaintiff that there had been an outing to New York on July 25, 2015 that included passing through Westchester County, and a stop at a restaurant in Westchester, there was no affirmative evidence of any visit to the notary's office on that date and there was testimony that it did not happen. The plaintiff also contends that the signature on the deed is a forgery. Finally, the plaintiff relies upon litigation in the Housing Session, relating to this condominium unit, including an eviction of the defendant from the premises on a date after the date recited on the deed, and subsequent proceedings in which explicitly or implicitly, the defendant's claim of ownership was rejected.
The court must return to its previously-noted reference to the fact that the defendant invoked his privilege against self-incrimination, when he was called as a witness in this proceeding. The court may draw an adverse inference from the invocation of that privilege, in the context of a civil proceeding. Valencis v. Nyberg, 160 Conn.App. 777, 790-91, 125 A.3d 1026 (2015). The court notes that in May of 2016, shortly before the criminal proceedings were commenced, the defendant (then self-represented) filed an answer to the complaint, and that answer was approximately twice as long as the original complaint. In that answer, he asserted that he had been the actual caretaker of his mother, that the other family members had taken advantage of their mother, etc.--none of which has been presented to the court in a factual sense. However commonplace it may be for a criminal defendant to be advised by his/her attorney to invoke the privilege in connection with related civil litigation, the court can draw an unfavorable inference, and has determined that it is appropriate to do so.
In terms of the defendant's case, then, the court is left with the deposition of the notary, explaining his usual practices and the notations made in connection with this case. With the exception of those factual matters, the defendant effectively relies upon the plaintiff bearing the burden of proof with respect to invalidation of the deed in his favor.
Discussion
The court must return to its initial observation concerning the nature of intra-family disputes. It is not uncommon for family members to rally to the defense of a parent, challenging the conduct of an allegedly predatory child or other relatives. The problem, of course, is that sometimes the underlying conduct was in fact predatory, and at other times the conduct merely was unwise from the perspective of the challengers. In the latter type of scenario, there often is a potential benefit to the challengers, should they be successful in undoing a transaction, creating an obvious motivation for the challenge. Here, a substantial asset either belongs solely to the defendant or it is property of the plaintiff, eventually to be passed along, in shares, to all of her children. (The will is an exhibit, as is an earlier version.)
Ultimately, the question is the validity of the deed, purportedly transferring ownership of the condominium unit from the plaintiff to the defendant. Again, in an affirmative-evidentiary sense, the defendant relies essentially exclusively on the existence of the notary's notations coupled with the notary's testimony concerning his usual procedures, and his corroboration that a recited name on the document is the name of one of his employees. He disputes the testimony of the plaintiff's witnesses to the effect that the signature is not that of Graciela Robalino, and inferentially rejects their claim that there was no occasion on which the deed could have been executed by Graciela Robalino.
The court cannot help but conclude that the cumulative effect of the evidence presented by the plaintiff is that the invalidity of that deed has been established.
In the absence of any claim to the contrary, the court has assumed that the proper standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence. Given recent decisions such as Freeman v. Alamo Management Co., 221 Conn. 674, 682, 607 A.2d 370 (1992) and Stuart v. Stuart, 297 Conn. 26, 33, 996 A.2d 259, 264 (2010), resisting/rejecting efforts to expand the scope of claims to which clear and convincing evidence is the appropriate standard, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would apply a heightened burden of proof to this situation. But see Bell v. Bloom, 146 Conn. 307, 309, 150 A.2d 300 (1959), in which non-delivery of a deed was required to be proved by clear and convincing evidence--is there a meaningful distinction between proof of non-delivery and other bases for invalidating a deed? Therefore, to the extent that there is a remote possibility that the proper standard is clear and convincing evidence, the court concludes that the plaintiff proved the invalidity of the deed, to that heightened standard.
Indeed, having framed the issue in that fashion, the very premise of that framing is in issue--is the deed facially or presumptively valid so as to necessitate evidence of invalidity? General Statutes § 47-5 sets forth the general requirements for a conveyance, and General Statutes § 47-36b provides a form that may be used (not compulsory).
Subsection (a) of § 47-5 provides:
All conveyances of land shall be: (1) In writing; (2) if the grantor is a natural person, subscribed, with or without a seal, by the grantor with his own hand or with his mark with his name annexed to it or by his agent authorized for that purpose by a power executed, acknowledged and witnessed in the manner provided for conveyances . . .; (3) acknowledged by the grantor, his agent or such duly authorized person (A) to be his free act and deed, or (B) in any manner permitted under chapter 6 or chapter 8; and (4) attested to by two witnesses with their own hands.
It is clear that the deed does not satisfy some of these requirements. General Statutes § 1-34 requires an acknowledgment to include a recitation that the person whose acknowledgment is being taken " acknowledged that . . . [she] . . . executed the same for the purposes therein contained " (emphasis added). There is a description by the notary of the document being signed as a deed, but nothing indicating that there was an acknowledgment of the intended purpose by the person executing the instrument. Especially given the issue of claimed limited understanding of English by Graciela Robalino, this is not a trivial concern. There is no recitation of an alternate formulation, such as that the execution of the document was her free act and deed. Instead, there is an inapplicable (and somewhat garbled) recitation that the document was " signed under for pains and penalty of perjury." An oath and an acknowledgment serve different purposes.
In a case in which Connecticut real estate is conveyed in a transaction occurring outside the state, General Statutes § 47-7 authorizes conformity with the local state's requirements--absent a record presented by the parties to the contrary, the court can assume that the requirements in New York are the same. Fruchtman v. Manning, 156 Conn. 500, 503, 242 A.2d 723, 724 (1968).
The statute also requires that the deed be " attested to by two witnesses with their own hands." The deed has two blank lines for two witnesses--presumably to sign--but the notary stated that his name as it appears next to the word " witness" is not his signature but more in the nature of a printed version of his name, and he further testified that he believed that the same was true of the entry for the other witness, i.e., while the name corresponds to someone who worked for him part-time, it appears to be a printed version of the name rather than a signature. To avoid any ambiguity, the court is not making any determination as to who printed the names--it may well have been the notary and/or his employee. Rather, the court concludes that the names were printed as identification of the persons present as witnesses, and were not placed on the document as signatures or otherwise intending to reflect that there was attestation by " their own hands." A printed name can constitute a signature as part of an attestation, but here it appears to have been an act of no legal consequence, intended solely as a means of identifying the persons who ostensibly were witnesses.
The court recognizes that General Statutes § 47-36aa provides for validation of deeds containing such defects, but this action was commenced within two years of the recording of the challenged deed, which precludes reliance on the statute.
A lis pendens, required by the statute, appears to have been filed; see #101.00.
Although the notary confirmed his signature (at the bottom of the page, not in the area designated for witnesses) and other mechanical aspects of the deed that he is claimed to have notarized (e.g., the imprint of his stamp), his testimony also cast substantial doubt on the transaction and events surrounding the transaction. July 25, 2015, the date of the deed, was a Saturday, and he was not regularly in his office in White Plains or his less commonly used office in Port Chester (although it was not a rarity). He has no record of any meeting involving the plaintiff. In the process of verifying identity of a person whose signature he was notarizing, he testified that he would rely upon a passport but not an expired passport--and the evidence established that the plaintiff did not have a valid (unexpired) United States passport on July 25, 2015. To the extent that there is a claim by the plaintiff (through her witnesses) that she never was in an office of any sort in New York on that date, and there was evidence that she had been (or might have been) in a restaurant in Westchester on that date, he made it clear that he would not have notarized a document in a restaurant or other similar (informal) setting. To the extent that the defendant asks the court to infer that the plaintiff must have gone to the notary's office on July 25, 2015, based on the testimony of the notary, the court finds that the more convincing evidence is that there was no such side-trip.
Her passport expired in June of 2015 and was not renewed until September.
To the contrary, the court finds credible the testimony of the plaintiff's witnesses to the effect that on the date in question, there had been an outing to New York, but that the plaintiff was never in any office, and never was outside the presence of a family member (other than the defendant) for more than a minute or two at most. Inferentially, the plaintiff was not able to travel, unaccompanied, to the New York office of a notary, and the only evidence presented concerning a trip to New York, at or around the time of the alleged transaction, precluded any unwitnessed visit to the New York notary's office. The only " stop" on that date, to which any witness testified, in the vicinity of either of the notary's offices, was at a restaurant, and as indicated earlier, the notary testified that he would not have notarized a deed under such circumstances. Thus, there was an unresolvable conflict with an essential premise of the claimed validity of the deed--the notary did not and would not have gone to a restaurant to notarize a document, but there was no side-trip to the notary's office. The date on the deed cannot overcome the practical impossibility of the notary and Graciela Robalino being in the same place at the same time on July 25, 2015.
Conversely, notwithstanding a purported deed dated July 25, 2015, the existence of that deed was never raised by the defendant prior to the Housing Session court issuing a judgment in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant in connection with his eviction from the subject premises, a judgment rendered after July 25, 2015. Postjudgment, in mid-November of 2015, there were efforts to present the deed as a means of challenging/vacating the judgment, which were rejected. Also in evidence was a yet-subsequent effort by the defendant to evict a tenant based on his claimed ownership of the property, again apparently rejected by the Housing Session, explicitly stated to be based on his lack of standing.
Further, there are nuances/incongruities/unanswered questions arising from the defendant's apparent version of events. In effect, all possible scenarios leave doubt-inducing questions concerning the plausibility of the defendant's version of events and undermining any facial validity of the deed.
A number of witnesses testified that on July 25, 2015, Graciela Robalino went with family members on a day trip into New York City (apparently to the Botanical Gardens), and accepting that to be true: The family member testified that the only stop in Westchester County was at a restaurant. The notary testified that he would not have gone to a restaurant to notarize a document. More fundamentally, what would have been the perceived urgency to summon a notary to a restaurant, to finalize execution of the deed? Even if this had been done at the notary's office, what would have been the urgency to make a side trip to a notary's office for that purpose? By whom and how would it have been arranged? Again, the unchallenged testimony is that Graciela Robalino was somewhat medically infirm (in her 80s, recently having had an accident, generally perceived to be relatively unstable on her feet, etc.), and generally not allowed to engage in activities in an unsupervised manner. She could not have arranged a meeting with the notary at his office without assistance from or, at a minimum, knowledge and cooperation of, other family members. It is only slightly less implausible that she could have arranged a meeting at the restaurant, without such assistance/knowledge/cooperation. The defendant was present for some of the events on that date, but the uncontroverted and therefore accepted testimony was that he was never alone with her for a long-enough period for the execution of the deed to have occurred.
Indeed, extracting from the foregoing paragraph an underlying current: What was the urgency, requiring execution of the deed on a weekend, in the course of an outing in New York? Putting aside the question as to whether family members would even have been willing to cooperate, what would have been the rationale for anyone to have done anything extra to facilitate the process?
If the court were to reject the testimony concerning a family day trip on July 25, 2015 (although there is no reason to do so other than as a means of avoiding already-identified improbabilities), that leads to an even more implausible scenario--how and why would the plaintiff have made arrangements with a New York notary, on a weekend, to finalize execution of the deed? There seems little doubt that she could not have gotten there without assistance and there is no suggestion, much less evidence, that the defendant is the person who facilitated such a visit. There is no proffered reason why a New York notary would have been utilized--there is no suggestion that she was in White Plains or elsewhere in Westchester County for any reason other than driving through, or stopping on the return from, the claimed family daytrip. Again, there was undisputed and accepted-as-true evidence that Graciela Robalino was not able to get around on her own due to physical limitations, accentuated by concerns about mental acuity and language issues.
Still further, there is no explanation as to the whereabouts of the deed between its alleged execution in late July and its eventual recording in November 2015. Specifically, the sequence of events was that the defendant had been refusing to pay any rent for occupancy of the condominium unit for some period of time, resulting in an eviction proceeding being started in June. This deed transaction allegedly took place in July. On August 13, 2015, a stipulation was filed relating to the eviction proceedings. The stipulation provided for the defendant to pay use and occupancy through November which he did not pay. In November, there was a stipulation for judgment entered on the record. When the defendant did not vacate in accordance with the judgment, the plaintiff applied for an execution, at which time the defendant first raised the issue of his status as owner. He claimed to have just discovered that he actually was the owner--seemingly a day or two before he was scheduled to be removed from the premises. There was no evidence as to who had the deed until it was recorded, nor any evidence as to who recorded the deed (other than the inference that it was the defendant, as the deed bore a notation that after recording, it was to be returned to him).
To recap: The deed was recorded on November 12, 2015; according to court records, the execution for eviction was issued on November 16, 2015; and on November 18, 2015, the defendant filed an application to delay or cancel the eviction based on " new evidence" which was claimed to establish that he was, in fact, the owner of the premises from which he was about to be evicted. The application in the collateral proceeding was denied (as was his later effort to evict the existing tenant, at a later date). This sequence of events--putting aside the lack of credible evidence to support it--is not believable.
Indeed, coming full circle, the very claim of newly-discovered information seems to contradict the version of events that the defendant has asked the court to accept. Harking back to the version of events as recited near the beginning of this decision, the contention of the defendant appears to be that he accompanied Graciela Robalino to the notary:
On July 25, 2015, Graciela Robalino, Marcos Robalino, and Brenda Robalino were in Westchester County, New York. On July 25, 2015, Graciela Robalino went to the Office of Innocent Enaye in Portchester, New York and executed a Quit Claim Deed of her real property transferring legal title to her son, Marcos Robalino.
Unless the defendant is claiming that they parted company before going to the notary--a side-trip ostensibly for defendant's benefit--he was there when the deed was executed. (Graciela Robalino certainly would not have been able to go there on her own--putting aside, for the moment, that Brenda Robalino categorically denied the existence of any stop in Westchester other than at a restaurant.) How could the deed be a surprise, almost four months later?
The plaintiff also contends that the signature on the purported deed is a forgery--not her actual signature. (For clarity: the plaintiff is acting through someone with a power of attorney, and did not testify herself.) A number of family members testified to that effect. The court is not able to reach any conclusion based on comparisons between the signature on the purported deed and the exemplar signatures on other documents. Some of the documents used for comparison are small and some have relatively faint signatures (copies if not copies of copies). Distinctions can be identified, but the court cannot conclude that the differences are due to forgery rather than normal variations, especially since--in addition to the variable quality of images--there is substantial variability as to timing, with some signatures relatively recent and others not so recent (e.g., the expired passport, presumably signed in 2005).
The failure to prove that the signature was a forgery is not determinative. It might be a forgery (if unproven based on the evidence presented); alternatively, the signature might have been obtained via deception or otherwise improperly.
As something of an alternative, the plaintiff contends that if the deed transaction actually occurred, and the deed actually had been signed by Graciela Robalino with appropriate formalities, the deed nonetheless is invalid:
If, despite the considerable evidence to the contrary, Graciela Robalino actually signed the Defective Deed to M. Robalino, upon information and belief she lacked the necessary capacity to know what she was signing or the significance of any such signing since she, upon information and belief, does not read or understand English, the language used for such alleged deed, and has been incapable of conducting her business affairs as a result of cognitive impairment since at least February 25, 2015. (Paragraph 24 of complaint.)
The court concludes that this alternate theory has not been established. Other than generalized comments about limitations on cognitive abilities, there was no credible evidence that she was sufficiently lacking in capacity to " know what she was signing or the significance of any such signing" to the point if invalidating a transaction otherwise proper. The fact that a power of attorney had been given, several months earlier, does not establish a lack of capacity and indeed, if there was a lack of capacity in July 2015, why should the court assume that there had been capacity to grant the power of attorney earlier that same year? (If there had been an appointment of a conservator, that might have required closer attention.) With respect to the language issue, there was evidence concerning a limitation on ability to communicate in English, and to read English, but the court is loath to allow such a generalized factual predicate to be used to invalidate a deed--and in this regard, the court cannot disregard the testimony of the notary to the effect that when command of the English language appeared to be an issue, efforts would be made to ascertain whether the person executing the instrument understood what he/she was doing/signing. The fact that the plaintiff herself did not testify also must be noted--the court has no first-hand sense of her limitations and she did not testify as to her lack of understanding, etc.
In sum, then, the court is satisfied that there is a probability--beyond a preponderance of the evidence (see footnote 3, above)--that the deed upon which the defendant relies is not valid. The only circumstances under which it could have been executed in front of the notary are highly--very highly--implausible. There was no opportunity in the sense that the notary would not have notarized the instrument at a restaurant (much less bring an employee as a possible witness) but there was no opportunity or possible occasion for a separate trip or detour to the notary's office. The deed suffers from a number of irregularities, in terms of structure and execution. While some of the irregularities might be attributable to a relative novice attempting to satisfy legal formalities, the aggregate effect establishes--or, depending on perspective, confirms--the invalidity of the deed.
The plaintiff claims that the deed lacks a date, but the notary's notations include the date on which he is claimed to have verified the signature of Graciela Robalino.
If there were any substantial doubt based on the events of July 25, 2015 and the document itself, the timing of Housing Session proceedings and submissions would be more than enough to eliminate any substantial doubt. The court cannot give any credibility to the notion that the defendant did not learn of a July 25, 2015 transaction, solely to his benefit, until mid-November. If he was unaware of the transaction when it supposedly occurred, who else would have been the moving force while at the same time keeping it a secret from the defendant--and then having the deed sent to the defendant by the Town Clerk, after recording, and just in the nick of time (relative to the eviction)? (Under the defendant's version of events, is there an implicit question as to whether there ever was a delivery of the deed, an essential element of the transaction? See, e.g., Cavanaugh v. Richichi, 100 Conn.App. 466, 469, 918 A.2d 290, 293 (2007).)
The plaintiff, then, has proven the invalidity of the deed.
Conclusion
It often is stated that " [i]t is an abiding principle of jurisprudence that common sense does not take flight when one enters a courtroom." American National Fire Insurance Co. v. Schuss, 221 Conn. 768, 778, 607 A.2d 418 (1992). Although in theory it often is more difficult to prove a negative proposition than it is to prove an affirmative proposition, the plaintiff has satisfied her burden of proof that the transaction (conveyance) of the condominium unit to the defendant never occurred. The plaintiff proved that there was no reasonable opportunity for the transaction to have occurred and the notary confirmed that it could not have happened at a restaurant in Westchester, the only locus in that county where there was a stop on July 25, 2015. The deed is sufficiently defective as to make the execution suspect, and sufficiently defective that as an alternate basis for invalidity, it fails to satisfy statutory requirements. The highly dubious circumstances under which the deed " surfaced" provides further confirmation for the implausibility of the defendant's version of events, and helps establish the plaintiff's contention that it never really happened.
The plaintiff has requested two forms of relief--a declaratory ruling and an injunction mandating that the defendant execute a release or otherwise re-convey the property to the plaintiff.
With respect to declaratory relief, it appears to be sufficient to declare that the deed is found to be invalid.
The proper action is one in equity seeking to set a deed aside. Thus, to invalidate a deed procured through undue influence, the recognized action is one to set aside the deed. See Collins v. Erdmann, 122 Conn. 626, 191 A. 521 (1937); Fritz v. Mazurek, 156 Conn. 555, 244 A.2d 368 (1968). The same type of action is proper to invalidate a deed based on allegations that it was improperly witnessed and notarized. See Smith v. Smith, 183 Conn. 121, 438 A.2d 842 (1981). Mitchell v. Citicorp Mortgage, Inc., No. 106228, 1993 WL 382985, at *1 (Conn.Super.Ct. Sept. 15, 1993) [10 Conn.L.Rptr. 50, ].
Unlike the plaintiff in Mitchell, the plaintiff here did ask for the deed to be invalidated. (" The plaintiff in this action did not seek that relief in her complaint, " id. )
Having concluded that the plaintiff is entitled to declaratory relief invalidating the deed, is there a need for further relief by way of injunction? Does the plaintiff already have an adequate remedy, such that the claim for injunctive relief is unnecessary? Further, to the extent that a release is requested, what language would such a document contain, in a case such as this? Is the plaintiff seeking a release of any claim that the deed is valid, notwithstanding a judgment (declaratory in nature) to the contrary? There is no reason provided as to a perceived need for this relief--there is no suggestion that the defendant would disregard a declaratory judgment such that additional relief is necessary. Courts generally are reluctant to issue unnecessary orders, and this seems to come within that concept.
To the extent that a declaratory action must relate to some underlying cause of action that is available (" Implicit in these principles is the notion that a declaratory judgment action must rest on some cause of action that would be cognizable in a nondeclaratory suit." Wilson v. Kelley, 224 Conn. 110, 116, 617 A.2d 433, 436 (1992)), is an alternate perspective that the plaintiff has effectively sought to quiet title (in her name) by this proceeding?
Ordering a quitclaim deed back to the plaintiff would implicate other or additional issues. Any rights which may have accrued prior to the filing of the lis pendens would not be affected by a quitclaim deed at this time, whereas an order of the court declaring the July 25, 2015 deed void would have a nunc pro tunc quality. Although not raised by the defendant, the court is concerned that requiring the defendant to execute a deed might have implications relating to the criminal charges pending--absent a need to tread into that area, the prudent course is to steer clear of unnecessary (if perhaps unlikely) complications.
The court further notes that any injunctive relief would be subject to an automatic stay upon issuance, and that the relief might be further stayed pending any appeal; see, Practice Book § 61-11. Injunctive relief might compel the defendant to seek such an extended stay.
There has been no explanation as to why the plaintiff might need both remedies--declaratory relief and injunctive relief. An application for an injunction invokes the discretion of the court, Brennan v. Brennan Associates, 293 Conn. 60, 86, 977 A.2d 107, 123 (2009), and the foregoing concerns militate against the exercise of discretion with respect to injunctive relief.
For all of the foregoing reasons, judgment enters in favor of the plaintiff with respect to the claim for declaratory relief. The deed to the property commonly known as 35-C, Shippan Avenue, in Stamford, Connecticut, recorded on the Stamford Land Records in Volume 11366 at page 53, is hereby declared void and of no legal effect, and therefore is set aside. Graciela Robalino, the purported grantor of that void deed, is (remains) the legal owner of the aforementioned property commonly known as 35-C, Shippan Avenue, in Stamford, Connecticut. The court declines to order any injunctive relief.
Judgment enters in accordance with the foregoing.