was ever the owner or lessor of the property, the notice
to quit is fatally defective. According to the defendants,
“everyone understood the property was never a part of
[the decedent’s] estate.”
The plaintiff contends that the notice is not defec-
tive because it was signed by Sank, who at the time rep-
resented the plaintiff in both her individual capacity
and her capacity as executor of the decedent’s estate.
She asserts that the inclusion of the word “executor”
after her name above the signature line is immaterial;
what matters is that the signatory—here, her attorney,
Sank—is among the persons designated in § 47a-23 (a)
as authorized to sign a notice to quit, i.e., the owner’s
legal representative or the owner’s attorney-at-law or
in-fact. She contends that § 47a-23 does not require a
property owner to personally sign the notice to quit or
to be expressly named therein, and, therefore, Sank’s
signature was all that was needed to satisfy the statute
because he was the true owner’s attorney-at-law. In sup-
port of her position, she relies on the Appellate Court’s
decision in U.S. Bank National Assn. v. Karl, 128 Conn.
App. 805, 809–10, 18 A.3d 685, cert. denied, 302 Conn.
909, 23 A.3d 1249 (2011). In that case, the notice to quit
was signed by “ ‘Renee E. Bishop, Attorney for Owner,’ ”
but it did not identify the owner of the property. Id., 807
n.1. The Appellate Court concluded that the notice sat-
isfied § 47a-23 (a), reasoning that the statute expressly
authorizes a property owner’s attorney-at-law to issue
a notice to quit on the owner’s behalf and that the statu-
tory form set forth in § 47a-23 (b) contains no indication
that the legislature considered the identity of the owner
to be necessary. Id., 810.
We are not persuaded by the plaintiff’s arguments.
Her position that Sank’s signature is dispositive would,
in effect, require us to disregard the designation of the
owner’s identity, including the word “executor,” which
was included in the notice to quit. Nothing in U.S. Bank
National Assn. or our case law, however, suggests that
courts should focus exclusively on the identity of the
Freccia v. Freccia