Indiana Lis Pendens Notice Deemed Discharged Despite Pending Appeal Of The Discharge Order

Lesson. If a trial court discharges (releases) a lis pendens notice in a final appealable order, an appeal of the underlying decision does not resurrect the notice or extend the filer’s lis pendens rights pending the outcome of the appeal.

Case cite. Knapp v. Wright, 76 N.E.3d 900 (Ind. Ct. App. 2017).

Legal issue. Whether the release of the lis pendens notice was premature because the court’s order was subject to an appeal.

Vital facts. Knapp was a dispute between the Wrights and the Knapps surrounding the enforceability of a land contract. The trial court entered a preliminary order granting the Wrights possession of the subject real estate. The Knapps responded by filing a lis pendens notice (LPN) asserting an ownership interest in a portion of the real estate based upon the land contract.

Procedural history. The Wrights filed an emergency motion to discharge the LPN because the trial court had already determined that the Knapps had no rights to the property under the land contract. The trial court wen on to hold an evidentiary hearing on the matter of damages and awarded the Wrights monetary relief. In the second order, the trial court stated that its ruling was a final, appealable judgment with respect to the real estate. The court’s order also granted the Wrights’ emergency motion to discharge the LPN and expressly authorized them to sell the real estate free and clear of the LPN. The Knapps appealed.

Key rules. The Indiana Supreme Court has described the doctrine of lis pendens as being:

fundamentally about notice. The term lis pendens itself means “pending suit,” and it refers specifically to “the jurisdiction, power, or control which a court acquires over property” involved in a pending real estate action. Any successor in interest to real estate is deemed to take notice of a pending action involving title to that real estate and is subject to its outcome. The judgment in the pending lawsuit binds all successors in interest, regardless of whether a successor was a party to the litigation. The doctrine’s purpose is to protect the finality of court judgments by discouraging purchases of contested real estate.

Ind. Code 32-30-11 is Indiana’s lis pendens statute. Section 7 states in pertinent part:

Upon the final determination of any suit brought:

(1) for the purposes described in section 2 or 3 of this chapter; and
(2) adversely to the party seeking to enforce a lien upon, right to, or interest in the real estate;

the court rendering the judgment shall order the proper clerk to enter in the lis pendens record a satisfaction of the lien, right, or interest sought to be enforced against the real estate. When the entry is made, the real estate is forever discharged from the lien, right, or interest.

Holding. The Knapps essentially claimed that the LPN should not have been removed pending the outcome of their appeal. The Indiana Court of Appeals disagreed and affirmed the trial court.

Policy/rationale. The trial court’s final appealable judgment disposed of all issues concerning title to the subject real estate. The Court of Appeals reasoned that the judgment constituted a “final determination” under the above statute that mandated the clerk to enter in the lis pendens record a satisfaction of the defendants’ interests they sought to enforce. The fact that the Knapps “intended to appeal … did not render the … final appealable judgment any less of a ‘final determination’ of their suit within the meaning of the statute.” Based upon the language in the statute and a 2003 case interpreting the operative words “final determination,” the Court concluded that the LPN was extinguished regardless of pending appellate rights. While I understand the Knapps’ position (what if the land contract ruling was reversed on appeal?), the language in the statute handcuffed the courts from extending the lis pendens in this instance.

Related posts.

• Indiana Supreme Court Tackles Lis Pendens Law
• Indiana Lis Pendens Notices:  What and When

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I frequently represent judgment creditors and lenders, as well as their mortgage loan servicers, entangled in lien priority and title claim disputes. If you need assistance with a similar matter, please call me at 317-639-6151 or email me at [email protected]. Also, don’t forget that you can follow me on Twitter @JohnDWaller or on LinkedIn, or you can subscribe to posts via RSS or email as noted on my home page.

Seventh Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of Borrower’s Post-Foreclosure Federal Claims Based On Rooker-Feldman and Res Judicata

Today’s post follows-up mine from 2/26/17: Borrower’s Claims For Violations of RESPA, TILA, FDCPA, RICO And FPRAM, Together With Claims for Various Torts, Dismissed. For an introduction to the case, Mains v. Citibank, 852 F.3d 669 (7th Cir. 2017), please click on that prior article.

The borrower appealed the District Court’s ruling to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Click here for the Court's opinion, which thoroughly sets up each of the borrower’s contentions and then knocks them out. Mains provides a road map through Indiana state and federal law under circumstances in which a borrower/mortgagor, in the aftermath of a state court foreclosure, pursues fraud-based remedies in federal court against a lender, a mortgage loan servicer and their law firms.

I’ve written about the Rooker-Feldman and res judicata doctrines many times in the past. In fact, this is the second post about a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision on the subject – click here for my first post. As to this recent opinion, here are a couple highlights:

1. Federal claims not raised in state court, or that do not expressly require review of the state court decision, may be subject to dismissal “if those claims are closely enough related to a state court judgment.” Is the federal plaintiff alleging that the state court judgment caused his injury?

2. The Seventh Circuit broadly concluded that “the foundation of the present suit is [the borrower’s] allegation that the [prior foreclosure judgment] was in error because it rested on a fraud perpetrated by the defendants…. [The borrower’s] remedies lie [solely] in the Indiana courts.” The Court reasoned that, to delve into any alleged fraud, “the only relief would be to vacate [the state court] judgment … that would amount to an exercise of de facto appellate jurisdiction, which is not permissible.”

The Court found that “in the final analysis, all of [the borrower’s] claims must be dismissed - most under Rooker-Feldman and a few for issue preclusion [res judicata].” The only thing the Court of Appeals changed was that the dismissal should be without, instead of with, prejudice. (As an aside, the borrower appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court, which denied his request to hear the case – Mains v. Citibank, 138 S.Ct. 227 (2017)).

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I frequently represent creditors and lenders, as well as their mortgage loan servicers, in contested mortgage foreclosure cases. If you need assistance with a similar matter, please call me at 317-639-6151 or email me at [email protected]. Also, don’t forget that you can follow me on Twitter @JohnDWaller or on LinkedIn, or you can subscribe to posts via RSS or email as noted on my home page.