COURT ENTERED JUDGMENT ON DEFAULT
KB is said to have signed a note for $770,000, which was secured by a mortgage on a Brooklyn property.
While a discharge of that mortgage was filed on March 20, 2015, some three years later, on February 2018, the plaintiff, "C," commenced an action in the Kings County Supreme Court seeking to cancel that discharge claiming it had been filed in error and that monies were still due under the note and mortgage.
Because KB failed to timely respond to the lawsuit, relief was awarded in C’s favor on default.
When an appeal was later filed, the Appellate Division, Second Department, noted that C presented sufficient proof that the underlying paperwork – i.e., the summons and complaint -- had been properly served, and that an answer from KB was due June 17, 2018.
Yet, almost a year later, on June 2, 2019, KB filed an answer which was supposedly dated March 1, 2018; months before the plaintiff's pleadings were even served or an answer was scheduled to be due. Of course, C rejected that questionable, late-filed answer, and the AD2 agreed with the plaintiff and the court below that because JB had failed to demonstrate a timely response to the litigation a default judgment was appropriate.
There’s no discharging that.
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DECISION