LendingHome Marketplace, LLC v. Traditions Oil Group, LLC

Citations

• 209 Conn. App. 862

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendant, which was defaulted for failure to appear. Thereafter, the trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure and rendered judgment thereon. The plaintiff sent notice of the judgment to the defendant, and certified to the court that notice had been mailed, pursuant to the applicable rule of practice (§ 17-22) and the court's uniform foreclosure standing orders. The defendant failed to redeem the property on or before its law day and title to the property vested in the plaintiff. More than one year after the passage of the law day, the defendant filed a motion to open the judgment of strict foreclosure. The court denied the defendant's motion to open and its subsequent motion to reargue/reconsider that ruling, and the defendant appealed to this court. Held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant's motion to open the judgment of strict foreclosure and its motion to reargue/reconsider that ruling: the particularized factual allegations in this case did not present the rare and extreme circumstances that would justify granting the defendant the extraordinary equitable relief it sought, namely, opening the judgment of strict foreclosure more than one year after title had vested absolutely in the plaintiff, in contravention of the applicable statute (§ 49-15), given that the defendant raised no argument that it improperly had been defaulted for failure to appear or that the court lacked personal jurisdic- tion over it due to improper service, the record disclosed no nefarious conduct on the part of the plaintiff, and title had already passed to a nonparty purchaser; moreover, although the defendant asserted that it never received the notices sent by the plaintiff, that failure was not fairly attributable to the plaintiff but, instead, to the defendant's apparent failure to update its mailing address on file with the