While protecting borrowers (where that may genuinely be needed) is a worthy endeavor, delaying foreclosures and planting land mines to impede the foreclosure process is far less palatable and a recent decision (WMC Mortgage v. Thompson1) may serve to emphasize the divergence of these two concepts. In a nutshell, the decision ruled that strictest adherence to statutory dictates is mandated, a conclusion which just might be problematic—a subject of this excursion.
As it was in the early nineties, then regarding priority of the condominium common charge lien, if the first reported decision in an area is erroneous, it creates a volume of litigation needing ultimately to find resolution at least at the Appellate Division level and perhaps even in the Court of Appeals. The condo lien issue was resolved in just that way, although it might be easy to predict that interpretation of the multiple new foreclosure statutes won’t generate such curative litigious waves.
