Florida Appeals Court Invokes 'Two Strikes & You're Out!' Rule To Permanently Sink Foreclosure Action; Unanimous Panel Says Banksters Allowed Only One Refiling Per Mortgage Note (Not Per Plaintiff), Then Get The Boot After The 2nd

In West Palm Beach, Florida, the Daily Business Review reports:

• One voluntary dismissal too many sank a foreclosure case for a lender who acquired a debt that had been sold at least twice before.
  
  The Fourth District Court of Appeal considered the procedural history and the number of voluntary dismissals tied to the note rather than the dismissals per plaintiff to reverse the foreclosure Wednesday and leave homeowner attorneys celebrating.
  
  "This has always been the rule … but it's interesting in the context of foreclosure where there's this constant shifting of plaintiffs," said foreclosure defense attorney Thomas Ice of Ice Legal in Royal Palm Beach, who was not involved in the litigation. "Often the parties are different on paper, but they're related somehow, so it really is the same lawsuit."
  
  The appellate court invoked the so-called two-dismissal rule under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.420(a)(1), which allows one voluntarily dismissal but not two.(1)
  
  The appeal pitted Loxahatchee property owner Charles Nolan against MIA Real Holdings LLC, a successor lender that sought to foreclose on the same default as its predecessor, Flagstar Bank. It was the third foreclosure attempt against Nolan following two voluntary dismissals.
  
  The first suit came from Flagstar, which filed for foreclosure in 2011 after Nolan reportedly defaulted on the loan.
  
  Flagstar dismissed that case and later assigned the note and mortgage to DKR Mortgage, which started its own foreclosure before selling the debt as a trouble mortgage to MIA Real Holdings.
  
  MIA sought to be substituted as the real party in interest to take over the case but then voluntarily dismissed the suit before filing a third complaint alleging the same breach.
  
  Nolan's lawyers, Brian Korte and Scott Wortman of Korte & Wortman in West Palm Beach, argued the suit — "based on the same mortgage, same note, same default and same damages as the prior two actions" — was barred under the two-dismissal rule.
  
  "It's just unfair," Korte told the Daily Business Review. "The court wants some finality. You get two bites of the apple."
  
  MIA attorney Jerome Tepps of Sunrise did not respond to requests for comment by deadline. His client triumphed at trial when Palm Beach Circuit Judge Catherine Brunson counted MIA's voluntary dismissal as the only one applied to the current parties in the litigation.
  
  But Nolan successfully challenged that decision.
  
  "We hold that the two noteholders — the original plaintiff and the subsequent assignee of the note — were the same 'plaintiff' under the rule, so that the second voluntary dismissal triggered an 'adjudication on the merits,' " Fourth DCA Judge Robert Gross wrote in a unanimous decision with Judges Martha Warner and Spencer Levine concurring.

Source: Appeals Court: Two Strikes and You're Out on Foreclosure Dismissals (may require subscription; if no subscription, TRY HERE, then click appropriate link for the story).

For the court ruling, see Nolan v. MIA Real Holdings, LLC, No. 4D15-666 (Fla. App. 4th DCA, February 24, 2016).

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(1) "[A] notice of dismissal operates as an adjudication on the merits when served by a plaintiff who has once dismissed in any court an action based on or including the same claim." Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.420(a)(1). (Page 124)