Since when does a mortgage foreclosure beget a negligence action? For mortgage lenders it is assuredly a Kafkaesque scenario, perilous and startlingly scary: people die in a fire at mortgaged premises and a court rules that the lender can be liable for damages to the estate of the deceased. It certainly doesn’t sound like a creature of real estate law or practice—not in the traditional sense that most practitioners would perceive, but it is. A new ruling says so in Lezama v. Cedano, 119 A.D.3d 479, 991 N.Y.S.2d 32 (1st Dept. 2014).
How this came about, why it is possible, and why lenders would aver that it should not be so is the focus that follows.
