111 Clearview Drive, LLC v. Patrick

Syllabus

The plaintiff property owner sought, by way of a summary process action, to recover possession of certain real property occupied by the defen- dants. A tax foreclosure action related to the property had previously been brought against, inter alia, J and H. The defendants were not named in the foreclosure action. The defendant L filed multiple motions in the foreclosure action attempting to intervene, claiming that she had acquired a two-thirds interest in the property upon J's death and that, after the court rendered a judgment of foreclosure by sale, she had acquired the remaining one-third interest in the property from the heirs of H. The court in the foreclosure action denied L's motion to intervene on behalf of the two-thirds interest in the property as untimely and dismissed L's motion to open and vacate the foreclosure judgment on behalf of the one-third interest in the property as moot. The property was subsequently sold and, after the sale was approved by the court in the foreclosure action, the buyer conveyed the property to the plaintiff. L subsequently commenced a quiet title action regarding the property, which was dismissed by the court as an improper collateral attack on the foreclosure judgment. The plaintiff initiated the present summary process action while the quiet title action was pending before the trial court, seeking immediate possession of the property. After the trial court dismissed the quiet title action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and while the appeal from that dismissal was pending before this court, the plaintiff filed a motion in limine in the present action seeking to exclude from the trial of the summary process action any evidence that contradicted or collaterally attacked the foreclosure judgment or the quiet title action. The court granted the motion in limine, and, during the subsequent trial in the summary process action, the court sustained the objections of the plaintiff's counsel to exhibits and evidence associ-