Judge Brian Cogan
MetLife held a $420,000 mortgage on property jointly owned by Balbir Pallian, his wife Jasvinder, and their son Kuldip. Only Balbir signed the refinancing mortgage and note. The proceeds of MetLife's loan were used to pay off the $293,150 balance of an existing mortgage held by HSBC Mortgage Loan Corp. (USA), and to make distributions to Balbir and Jasvinder, to their other child Guvinder, and to Kuldip's wife. In the Pallians' quiet title action—removed on diversity and federal question grounds—MetLife sought imposition of an equitable mortgage on Kuldip's and Jasvinder's property interests, effectively bringing them within its mortgage to Balbir. MetLife did not prove entitlement. Despite obtaining a perfected lien on Balbir's interest, MetLife did not prove that Jasvinder and Kuldip implicitly intended to mortgage their interests along with Balbir's. Nor were they unjustly enriched. The value they received was consistent with MetLife's agreement with Balbir about the distribution of mortgage proceeds. The court noted that neither Kuldip's wife nor Guvinder—who also received distributions—had anything to do with the prior mortgage or the MetLife mortgage, and that MetLife did not seek to recover the distributions from them.
