Plaintiffs Must Overcome Defenses to Win Summary Judgment

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Another appellate victory for Dineen Wasylik and DPW Legal, overturning an improper grant of summary judgement in a foreclosure appeal.

Another appellate victory for
Dineen Wasylik and DPW Legal,
overturning an improper
grant of summary judgement
in a foreclosure appeal.

We are proud to report our firm racked up another appellate win yesterday — DPW Legal secured the reversal of summary judgment against our clients in a mortgage foreclosure action. In this case, the Bank before the trial court won summary judgement, even though its summary judgment motion made no mention of the defendants’ numerous affirmative defenses set out in their answer.

On appeal, we correctly pointed out that Rule 1.510 Requires that a motion for summary judgment “shall state with particularity the grounds upon which it is based and substantial matters of law to be argued,” as well as the myriad of cases that require plaintiffs to affirmatively overcome each and every defense before they can earn summary judgment. The appellate court ultimately agreed, and reversed the summary judgment, explaining:

It is true that the Bank did submit a response to an affidavit regarding the Paragraph 22 notice, disputing the Amstones’ affidavits that the notice had not been received or was deficient. But the Bank did not address the affirmative defenses in its motion for summary judgment. And at the hearing, the Bank’s counsel simply asserted that “the Affirmative Defenses were dealt with.” The Amstones’ counsel responded that the Bank had failed to refute all of the affirmative defenses…The Amstones’ counsel also emphasized that the affidavits regarding the Paragraph 22 notice crated a factual dispute that needed to be resolved. The court made no findings regarding any of these defenses. Accordingly, genuine issues of material fact remained, and summary judgment should not have been granted.

In our view, this was a case where strong advocacy at oral argument made a huge difference. What is not clear from the opinion is that the Bank argued that the defendants had waived this issue by failing to argue it on the record below, and the court seemed to want to buy that waiver argument. At oral argument, we were able to refute the waiver argument with citation directly to the proper part of the record showing why it was not waived. We’ve ordered the oral argument video, and will further expound on the important preservation issues in a later post, when we can share the video. But in the meantime, the lesson to be learned is that at the trial level, preservation is key, and at the appellate level, knowing your record cold is key (see my prior post on preparing for oral argument).

Attorney Ralph Fisher acted as able trial counsel, and ensured the issues were preserved on appeal.

The case is Amstone v. The Bank of New York Melon, No. 2D14-5480 (Jan. 6, 2016) [.pdf].

SCOTUS Updates Rules of Practice

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The United States Supreme Court has updated its rules of practice, effective July 1, 2013 [.pdf]. The changes are relatively minor, such that the Court did not make them available for comment before adopting them. The changes include:

  • Rule 12.6: Providing that a party aligned with and supporting the grant of a petition has 30 days to file a supporting brief. The party must still notify the court of its intent to file within 20 days, and cannot get an enlargement of time to file.
  • Rules 15 & 18: Increasing the number of days the Clerk waits to distribute petitions to the Justices, which gives Petitioners more time to get a reply brief served and included in the distribution packet.
  • Rule 29.3: requiring electronic transmission of Petitions to other parties in most instances.
  • Rules 37.2(a) and 3(a): Clarifying that only one signatory to an amicus brief need get consent, eliminating the need for additional signatories to file consents.
  • Rule 39: Allowing attorneys who are appointed by a state court to appear without filing an affidavit of indigency.
  • Rule 28.8: Requiring everyone to argue before the Court to be an attorney.

This article explains the interesting backstory of the Court’s new Rule 28.8, including the fascinating story of the last non-lawyer to argue (and win!) before the Supreme Court.

Oral Argument Via FaceTime

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I’ve written before about how the judges on the Second District Court of Appeal have pretty thoroughly incorporated the use of iPads into their decision making process. But this week, that integration hit a higher level. A colleague reported to me that this week, one of the judges on the Second District Court of Appeal was ill for his scheduled Oral Argument panel at the Tampa courtroom, so the Judge participated from home via FaceTime on his iPad. An iPad was set up in the judge’s place on the bench, and the judge presumably used either his iPad or computer with webcam at home to have his face on the screen. My colleague reported that the judge did not have any questions during his oral argument presentation, but did ask a question remotely for one of the attorneys on another case.

This seems like an elegant solution to the problem. After all of the time the judge had no doubt put into preparing for argument, it would have been a shame to miss it, or leave the panel short. After all of the time the parties had put into preparing for this panel, it would have been a waste of both party and judicial resources to re-schedule the argument and force everyone to come back up to speed at a later date. This way, the germs stayed home, the judge didn’t have to drag himself to Tampa, and yet the show could go on.

The future is now.