Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. v. Bretoux

Citations

• 225 Conn. App. 455

Syllabus

The plaintiff bank sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendant. The defendant asserted the special defenses of, inter alia, unclean hands and estoppel. He alleged that, commencing one month after he stopped making required payments on the note and continuing for a period of more than three and one-half years, the defendant submitted to C Co., the plaintiff's loan servicer, twenty-five applications to modify the terms of the underlying note and mortgage. Despite C Co.'s continuing encouragement to submit these applications, they all were denied for various reasons, including technical defects. The defendant alleged that the repeated denials caused him to incur additional debt due to the accrual of interest, fees, and other costs associated with his default. The trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment as to the liability of the defendant, determining, inter alia, that, although the defendant's estoppel defense was legally sufficient, it did not dispel the defendant's liability for defaulting on the mortgage but, rather, only indicated that the amount of the interest, fees, and other costs had increased due to the plaintiff's alleged conduct. With respect to the defendant's unclean hands defense, the trial court found that the defendant failed to provide evidence beyond his own affidavit that proved that the plaintiff had engaged in wilful misconduct. Thereafter, the plaintiff filed a motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure and submitted an affidavit of debt that included the interest and fees that had accumulated on the note while the defendant was attempting to secure a loan modification. In response, the defendant filed a motion for a judgment of foreclosure by sale, which included an objection to the amount of the debt described in the affidavit, on the basis that the plaintiff wrongfully had increased the amount of the debt through its own misconduct. The trial court overruled the defendant's objection