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Quick AnswerIn a decision filed July 13, 2026, Justice Menachem M. Mirocznik of the Supreme Court, Kings County, dismissed a Brooklyn foreclosure that Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee, brought in February 2023. New York's RPAPL 1306 requires a lender to file the borrower's last known telephone number with the state before it sues, and the bank's filing listed it as "0." Petroff Amshen showed the court the bank's own filing from an earlier foreclosure on the same mortgage, which listed our client's number. The court called the bank's explanation "patently incredible," denied its motion for summary judgment in its entirety, granted our client summary judgment dismissing the action and directed the Clerk to cancel the notices of pendency.
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee, filed this foreclosure against our client in Kings County on February 17, 2023. It was not the first time. An earlier foreclosure on the same note and mortgage, started in 2011, had been dismissed in 2022.
This time the bank moved for summary judgment. It asked the court to strike our client's answer, enter a default against the other defendants and appoint a referee to compute the amount due. Summary judgment is how banks usually win foreclosure cases. We opposed the motion and cross-moved to have the case dismissed.
When a lender mails the 90-day pre-foreclosure notice, New York's RPAPL 1306 gives it three business days to file information about the loan with the state's superintendent of financial services. The statute says the filing must include, "at a minimum," the borrower's name, address and "last known telephone number." The state uses that information to steer foreclosure prevention and counseling help to borrowers who need it.
Getting this filing right is a condition the lender has to meet before it can bring a foreclosure, and courts require strict compliance. Deutsche Bank's filing for our client listed his telephone number as "0." It listed the days delinquent as "Other."
The bank's response came from a loan analyst at the parent company of its servicer. The number was listed as 0, the bank said, because it was not known.
We had the bank's RPAPL 1306 filing from the 2011 case. It listed our client's telephone number.
Think about what the bank was asking the court to believe. It held his mortgage. It had already sued him once and given the state his phone number in that case. Then, in the second case, it said it did not know the number.
Justice Menachem M. Mirocznik found the analyst's statement "insufficient to raise an issue of fact" and "patently incredible." He went further, writing that it is not "remotely credible that a mortgage lender does not retain a borrower's telephone number at all."
The court also refused to treat the missing number as a technicality. Leaving it out, the decision says, "is not a mere technical defect or irregularity" and "undermines the purpose of the statute." The statute says what it says, and the court applied it as written. In the court's words:
The express language should be, and at least for this Court is, the end of the inquiry.Supreme Court, Kings County, Decision, Order and Judgment, 2026
From the bank's RPAPL 1306 filings in the 2011 case and in this case, as described in the court's decision.
The record, in order: when the filing is due, what else it listed, and what the court held on each argument.
RPAPL 1306 gives a lender three business days after it mails the 90-day notice to file the loan information with the state. Compliance is a condition the lender has to meet before it can sue, and courts require strict compliance.
The statute lists the borrower's "last known telephone number" among the things the filing must include "at a minimum." Comparing this rule with New York's other foreclosure notice laws, the court put it simply: "All three require strict compliance. All three require a phone number."
The state uses the filing to steer foreclosure prevention and counseling help to borrowers at risk. A filing without a way to reach the borrower cannot do that job.
The bank said it did not know the number. Its own filing from the earlier case had it, so the excuse could not raise a real question of fact, and the court granted our client summary judgment dismissing the action.
You will probably never see your lender's RPAPL 1306 filing. It goes to the state, and nobody mails you a copy. But the lender has to get it right before it can sue you, and here one blank that was not really blank ended the foreclosure.
Look at the bank's older paperwork too. When a bank sues you a second time, what it filed the first time can be the best evidence against it. Deutsche Bank's 2011 filing is what sank its sworn explanation in this case.
If you've been sued for foreclosure in Brooklyn or anywhere in New York, especially for the second time, ask a foreclosure defense attorney to pull every filing the lender made.
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