Wilmington Trust, National Assn. v. N'Guessan

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to foreclose a mortgage on certain real property owned by the defendant N. N filed various special defenses, and subsequently filed a request for leave to amend his special defenses to add as an additional special defense that the foreclosure action was barred by the doctrines of res judicata and/or collateral estoppel, apparently referenc- ing a 2011 foreclosure action against him involving the same mortgage and a prior assignee of the mortgage, which was dismissed for failure to prosecute with due diligence. The trial court granted a motion for summary judgment as to liability filed by the plaintiff, and rejected each of N's special defenses except that it failed to address the special defense regarding res judicata and collateral estoppel. Thereafter, while a motion for a judgment of strict foreclosure was pending, the court issued an order sustaining the plaintiff's objections to N's interrogatories and requests for production. The court rendered judgment of strict foreclo- sure, from which N appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court did not err in granting the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment without considering the applicability of the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel as, based on this court's plenary review, neither doctrine precluded the court from concluding that there were no genuine issues of material fact as to N's liability: the doctrine of res judicata was inapplicable as the record indicated that the court in the 2011 foreclosure action dismissed that action and that it had not been adjudicated on the merits; moreover, the doctrine of collateral estoppel was inapplicable because, although the same note and mortgage that were at issue in the 2011 foreclosure action were at issue in this foreclo- sure action, there was no question that the court was faced with a different set of events as six years had passed between when the 2011 action was dismissed and the present action was instituted, N made no pa