Case Results

A client came to Tom after spending nearly four years stuck in a Nassau County foreclosure action with no clear path forward. While reviewing the file, Tom asked about the individual the bank's process server claimed to have served on the client's behalf — a procedural detail most attorneys gloss over.

In New York, substituted service permits a lender to serve a defendant by delivering process to a person of suitable age and discretion residing at the property. The name on the affidavit of service belonged to the client's uncle. When Tom asked whether he could speak with the uncle, the client explained that his uncle had died ten years before the alleged service was made.

Service on a deceased person is not only legally impossible — it raises serious questions about the sworn affidavit submitted by the process server. Tom contacted the bank with the discrepancy. After conducting its own internal review, the bank agreed to voluntarily withdraw the foreclosure action.

Under ordinary circumstances, the lender would simply have refiled. But the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act (FAPA), signed into law in December 2022, dramatically tightened the statute of limitations on refiling stale foreclosure actions in New York. The lender no longer had a clean path back to court — and they knew it.

“The client walked away from a four-year foreclosure with his home and over $2 million in instant equity that did not exist before Tom took the case.”

With FAPA's restrictions creating real leverage, Tom negotiated a payoff settlement on a $2.7 million loan balance. The final figure: $600,000. The client walked away from a four-year foreclosure with his home and over $2 million in instant equity that did not exist before Tom took the case.

This result was not produced by luck. It was produced by reading the file line by line, asking the right question at the right moment, and understanding exactly which New York statutes and recent legislative changes turned a procedural detail into decisive leverage.

Tom represented an elderly client facing eviction under a stipulation of settlement that expressly barred her from filing an Order to Show Cause to stay the eviction itself. On its face, the stipulation appeared to foreclose any procedural challenge.

Reading the stipulation carefully, Tom recognized that the restriction applied only to challenges based on the eviction proceeding — not to applications grounded in independent circumstances. The client was in her late seventies and suffered from serious health conditions that made an immediate move dangerous to her wellbeing.

Tom filed an Order to Show Cause based on the client's health, a basis the stipulation did not foreclose. The judge signed the order, granting a stay of the eviction and giving the client the additional time she needed to secure funds and relocate safely.

“Tom found the door the stipulation had not closed.”

Most attorneys reading the same stipulation would have stopped at the first sentence. Tom found the door the stipulation had not closed.