From the Decision
What the Court
ordered.
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Quick AnswerOn October 16, 2026, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County, dismissed Bayview Loan Servicing's 2016 foreclosure against Petroff Amshen's client as barred by the six-year statute of limitations. Justice Menachem M. Mirocznik held that the loan was accelerated in July 2008, that a September 1, 2008 loan modification could at most make the six years run from its own date under General Obligations Law 17-105, and that either way the period expired by September 1, 2014, more than nineteen months before Bayview filed. The Court reconsidered its own 2023 order to reach that result and directed the Clerk to cancel all four notices of pendency on the property.
Our client has a mortgage on a condo unit in Brooklyn. That mortgage has been in and out of court since 2008.
The first foreclosure was filed on July 14, 2008. In that complaint the lender at the time elected to call the entire balance due. That step is called acceleration, and in New York it starts a six-year clock on the whole debt. The 2008 case ended in a discontinuance in 2011.
A second foreclosure followed in May 2010. The court dismissed it in 2014 because the lender abandoned it.
Bayview Loan Servicing filed this case, the third, on April 7, 2016. By then nearly eight years had passed since the loan was called due. Along the way Bayview filed four notices of pendency against the unit, the public filings that warn anyone checking title that a foreclosure is pending.
Bayview needed a way around the calendar, and it pointed to a loan modification that took effect on September 1, 2008. Its argument was that the modification undid the 2008 acceleration, put the loan back on monthly installments, and restarted the clock.
In 2023 the court accepted a version of that argument and let the case continue. Bayview had also asked twice for summary judgment, in 2018 and 2019, and the court denied it both times. So the case kept going, year after year.
We went back to the court with a 2024 Second Department decision, HSBC Bank USA, N.A. v. Mohammed. That case holds that when a loan modification counts as a written promise to pay, the six years run from the date of the modification. The modification does not wipe the slate clean and wait for the lender to accelerate again.
The math was simple. Six years from September 1, 2008 ended on September 1, 2014. Bayview filed on April 7, 2016.
On plaintiff's own premise, therefore, the action is untimely.Decision and Order, filed October 16, 2026, at 13
We also showed that the 2010 case could not save Bayview. That case was dismissed as abandoned, and under the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act a lender cannot use a case it neglected to buy more time. Bayview had one more argument: that FAPA stops only lenders acting on their own, and a modification is an agreement both sides sign. The Court disagreed. The statute reaches any agreement, and a two-sided deal is the ordinary case it covers.
The Court asked both sides for extra briefing on Mohammed. Bayview never addressed it. The Court noted the silence and said it would count as a concession on its own.
The red part is how late Bayview filed: 19 months after its own deadline.
The record, in order: what the law gives a lender, when Bayview filed, and what the Court held on each argument.
A mortgage is paid in installments, so ordinarily each missed payment has its own six-year limit. But once a lender calls the entire balance due, the whole debt becomes due at once and the six years under CPLR 213(4) run on all of it. Filing a foreclosure complaint that demands the full balance is an acceleration. That happened here on July 14, 2008.
General Obligations Law 17-105 is the only statute that lets a writing affect the foreclosure limitations period. A qualifying written promise to pay, made after the right to foreclose has accrued, makes the period run from the date of the promise. The Court, following the Second Department in Mohammed and the Fourth Department in Pulver, held that this is one effect and one effect only: a fresh six years from the writing. It does not return the loan to installment status and wait for the lender to accelerate again. Six years from September 1, 2008 ended September 1, 2014.
The Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act amended General Obligations Law 17-105(4) to bar any acknowledgment, waiver, promise or agreement, express or implied, from resetting or extending the period in form or effect, unless it is made as the section provides. Calling a modification a de-acceleration does not take it outside the section. The Court declined to follow a 2026 Third Department decision that reasoned otherwise, holding it is bound by the Second Department and that the Second Department's reading is the one that gives every word of the statute meaning.
Bayview's 2010 predecessor case was dismissed as abandoned under CPLR 3215(c). CPLR 205-a, as amended by FAPA, denies the six-month savings clause where the prior action was terminated for any form of neglect. A second case filed while the clock is running does not restart it either. The 2010 case gave Bayview nothing.
The 2023 order had treated the modification as revoking the acceleration without measuring it against General Obligations Law 17-105. Under CPLR 2221(e), a clarification of decisional law is enough to support renewal. The Court held Mohammed was that clarification, and in any event exercised its continuing power to reconsider its own interlocutory order. The result changed.
The dismissal is on the statute of limitations, not on whether the debt is owed. The Court did not reach our client's separate argument that Bayview's default notice failed paragraph 22 of the mortgage, finding it academic. Our client's counterclaims were severed and continue.
Lenders often treat a loan modification as a fresh start for the statute of limitations. This decision says a modification gets six years from its own date, and nothing more. Older foreclosures frequently have a history like this one: an early case that called the loan due, a modification, another case, and then a long gap. Each of those dates matters. A ruling against the homeowner years ago does not always settle the question either, because the law on these deadlines has changed.
None of this is automatic. It is found by reading the file, every complaint, every modification, every dismissal, and litigating what the dates show.
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