From the Decision
What the Court
ordered.
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Quick AnswerOn December 16, 2025, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County, dismissed with prejudice CitiMortgage's 2020 foreclosure against Petroff Amshen's clients. Justice Cenceria P. Edwards held that CitiMortgage accelerated the mortgage debt when it first sued on December 12, 2007, so the six-year statute of limitations expired on December 12, 2013, and that under the 2022 Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act its later discontinuances did not reset the clock. The Court canceled the notice of pendency and held our clients are entitled to their attorneys' fees under Real Property Law 282.
The loan behind this case was made in January 2001 and modified in 2004, secured by a mortgage on residential property in Brooklyn. CitiMortgage filed this foreclosure on February 13, 2020, claiming a payment default as of August 1, 2013.
It was not the bank's first try. CitiMortgage had sued to foreclose the same mortgage on December 12, 2007, and the record showed further foreclosure cases in 2008 and 2014. Both of our clients answered, raised the statute of limitations, and counterclaimed for their attorneys' fees.
A New York foreclosure has to be brought within six years after the lender accelerates the debt, and filing a foreclosure complaint that calls the full balance due does exactly that. CitiMortgage's 2007 complaint said the bank had "elected to exercise its option to demand immediate payment in full." The Court found there was "no dispute" that the 2007 case accelerated the debt.
So the clock started on December 12, 2007. It ran out on December 12, 2013, more than six years before CitiMortgage filed this case.
We moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint as time-barred and granting our clients' fee counterclaim, and walked the Court through CitiMortgage's earlier cases on this mortgage, starting with the one filed in December 2007. CitiMortgage leaned on Freedom Mortgage Corp. v. Engel, a 2021 Court of Appeals decision holding that a lender's voluntary discontinuance of a foreclosure revokes the acceleration. If that rule applied, the clock would have reset.
CitiMortgage's reliance on the Court of Appeals' decision in Engel to argue that an acceleration is revoked when a foreclosure action is discontinued is misplaced.Decision and Order, filed December 16, 2025, at 9
After Engel, the Legislature passed the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act, which says a voluntary discontinuance does not "waive, postpone, cancel, toll, extend, revive or reset the limitations period." The Court also applied the Second Department's rule that filing a new foreclosure on the same mortgage abandons the old one, a "de facto discontinuance." Under the new law that reset nothing either, and CitiMortgage "failed to demonstrate that it otherwise de-accelerated the mortgage debt."
Then the fees. The mortgage gave CitiMortgage the right to add its attorneys' fees in a foreclosure, and the bank did not dispute that. Real Property Law 282 turns a clause like that into a matching right for the borrower who wins. Because our clients "successfully defended this foreclosure action," they are entitled to an award of reasonable attorneys' fees.
CitiMortgage called the loan due on December 12, 2007. Its six years ran out on December 12, 2013. It filed this case on February 13, 2020.
The record, in order: what the law gives a lender, when CitiMortgage filed, and what the Court held on each argument.
Under CPLR 213(4) a lender has six years to foreclose. Once the debt is accelerated, the six years run on the entire balance, and filing a foreclosure that demands payment in full is an acceleration. CitiMortgage's December 12, 2007 complaint did exactly that, and the Court found no dispute about it.
Second Department law lets a lender take back its election to call the loan due, but only through an affirmative act of revocation within the six years. CitiMortgage's position was that ending its earlier cases was that act.
In 2021 the Court of Appeals held in Engel that a lender's voluntary discontinuance revokes the acceleration. In December 2022 the Legislature passed the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act, adding CPLR 3217(e): a voluntary discontinuance does not, in form or effect, waive, postpone, cancel, toll, extend, revive or reset the limitations period. The Second Department has held FAPA nullified that part of Engel. The Court applied it here to a case filed in 2020.
When a lender files a new foreclosure on the same mortgage, Second Department law treats the old case as abandoned, a de facto discontinuance. Under FAPA, that has no more effect on the clock than a formal one. With no other proof of de-acceleration, the six years ended December 12, 2013.
Real Property Law 282 implies into a residential mortgage a promise by the lender to pay the borrower's reasonable attorneys' fees for successfully defending a case the lender brings, whenever the mortgage lets the lender recover its own. CitiMortgage conceded its mortgage had that clause. The Court granted our clients' counterclaim.
Before the 2022 law, a lender could argue that dropping a foreclosure undid the acceleration and gave it a fresh six years. That argument no longer works, and this Court applied the new law to a case filed two years before it passed. Many people are sued, watch the case go quiet, and are sued again years later. The six years run from when the bank first called the whole loan due, and a bank that drops its case does not get that time back.
None of this is automatic. It is found by reading every case the bank has filed on the loan, every complaint and every date, and litigating what the file shows.
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