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Red Barn Country, LLC v. Trombley
Citations: 120 A.D.3d 1537; 993 N.Y.S.2d 206
Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York; September 26, 2014; New York; State Appellate Court
An appeal was made from an order by the Supreme Court in Onondaga County, which had granted part of the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ amended complaint. The appellate court unanimously reversed this order, denied the motion in its entirety, and reinstated the amended complaint. The plaintiffs filed this action to recover money that Gary Hafner (plaintiff) paid to discharge a mortgage on property owned by his sister (the defendant). The family farm was comprised of various parcels owned by both the plaintiff and his deceased father, who secured a single mortgage against those parcels. After defaulting on the mortgage, a foreclosure action was initiated. The decedent transferred certain parcels encumbered by the mortgage to the defendant, while the remaining parcels were transferred to the plaintiff, who sold them to Red Barn Country, LLC. As part of the sale, the plaintiff paid off the mortgage. Subsequently, the decedent initiated a separate action to annul the property transfer to the defendant, which was dismissed posthumously due to it being duplicative of a pending Surrogate’s Court proceeding regarding the decedent’s estate distribution. The defendant argued that the issues in the current action should be resolved in Surrogate’s Court, leading to the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ amended complaint. The appellate court found that CPLR 3211 (a)(4), which allows for dismissal due to another pending action between the same parties, was not applicable. The court determined that the parties and causes of action were not the same; the Surrogate’s Court action concerned the transfer of property, while the current action was about the defendant's failure to pay the related mortgage. Consequently, the court concluded that there was no justification for dismissing the amended complaint.