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WHERE ONE OF TWO RELATED FORECLOSURE ACTIONS IS SUBJECT TO A MERITORIOUS MOTION TO DISMISS AS TIME-BARRED, IT IS AN ABUSE OF DISCRETION TO GRANT A MOTION TO CONSOLIDATE THE TIME-BARRED ACTION WITH THE TIMELY ACTION (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Justice Dillon, reversing Supreme Court, determined that where one action is subject to a meritorious motion to dismiss as time-barred, it is an abuse of discretion for a judge to grant a motion to consolidate that action with another which is timely:

… [B]oth actions are to foreclose on the same mortgage securing the same debt owed by the same defendant. However, in our view, a precondition for merging two or more actions is that each action should itself be viable, meaning that neither is confronted with a pending—and apparently meritorious—motion to dismiss. Once the defendant here met her burden of establishing, prima facie, that the time in which to commence the 2017 action had expired, it became the plaintiff’s burden to raise a question of fact as to whether the statute of limitations was tolled or otherwise inapplicable, or whether the plaintiff actually commenced the action within the applicable limitations period. The plaintiff could not meet that shifted burden by merely asserting that the 2017 action will become timely once it is merged with the timely 2008 action. The purpose of consolidation under CPLR 602(a) is not to provide a party with a procedural end run around a legal defense applicable to one of the actions. In our opinion, in such instances, judicial discretion should not be used to cure the untimeliness of one action by tethering it to a related timely action. We hold, as an issue of apparent first impression that, in this case, the Supreme Court improvidently exercised its discretion in granting consolidation and that, in general, consolidation should be denied where one of the cases to be consolidated is subject to a meritorious motion to dismiss…. . HSBC Bank USA, N.A. v Francis, 2023 NY Slip Op 00992, Second Dept 2-22-23

Practice Point: Here there were two related foreclosure actions. One was subject to dismissal as time-barred and the other was timely. The two should not be consolidated as an end-run around the statute of limitations.

 

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