Clearview Concrete Products Corp. v. S. Charles Gherardi, Inc.

88 A.D.2d 461, 453 N.Y.S.2d 750, 1982 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 17529
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedAugust 30, 1982
StatusPublished
Cited by101 cases

This text of 88 A.D.2d 461 (Clearview Concrete Products Corp. v. S. Charles Gherardi, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clearview Concrete Products Corp. v. S. Charles Gherardi, Inc., 88 A.D.2d 461, 453 N.Y.S.2d 750, 1982 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 17529 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

- Lazer, J.

The plaintiffs in these two consolidated foreclosure actions are the trustees of the Pension and Retirement Benefit Fund, Locals 138, 138A and 138B, International Union of Operating Engineers (the Fund), which holds a first mortgage on a 500-acre parcel of land in Manorville, and Clearview Concrete Products Corp. (Clearview), the holder of a second mortgage on the same property. The property owner, Manorville Estates, a limited partnership, and its general partner, S. Charles Gherardi, Inc. (jointly referred to here as Manorville),1 have asserted the defense of unclean hands and counterclaimed for rescission of both mortgages alleging fraudulent concealment of an acceleration provision in two unrecorded instruments which modified and extended the Fund’s mortgage. In further causes of action* Manorville seeks damages against Clearview and its principal, Andrew DeLillo, for fraud and breach of warranty. After a lengthy trial, Special Term dismissed the counterclaims and decreed foreclosure of both mortgages. On this appeal, we conclude that Manorville is not entitled to relief against the Fund because it has failed to prove the latter’s participation in any fraudulent scheme. As to the second mortgage, the right to rescind was waived by Manorville’s ratification of the entire transaction after discovery of the fraud. Although the ratification did not extinguish Manorville’s claims for monetary damages, the [463]*463record supports an award of nothing more than nominal damages.

I

Manorville’s defenses and claims emanate from the circumstances surrounding its December, 1972 purchase of the acreage from Clearview which, in turn, had previously acquired it from the Fund. The original terms of the Fund’s purchase-money mortgage from Clearview required a substantial payment of principal on July 1, 1971, but shortly before that date the Fund agreed to defer the July payment until October in return for the right, to accelerate the entire principal sum should the property be conveyed. Although the instruments containing these modifications of the Fund’s mortgage were not recorded, a recorded assignment of that mortgage contained a reference to them. At its closing with Clearview on December 21, 1972, Manorville was thus aware that modification agreements existed but was unaware of their contents. To induce Manorville to close title in the face of unknown mortgage provisions, Clearview denied the agreements existed, threatened cancellation of the purchase contract, and furnished Manor-ville with an affidavit in which Clearview’s president, DeLillo, averred: “Clearview is not a party to any extension or modification agreement and most especially the extension and modification agreements recited in an assignment of mortgage dated March 3, 1972 and recorded July 5, 1972 in Liber 6405 Mp 370.”

Manorville accepted the representation and title closed.

Knowledge of the falsity of DeLillo’s affidavit came to Manorville quickly for, within a few weeks, it received copies of the unrecorded agreements. The Fund’s reaction to the sale was prompt: it exercised its right to accelerate payment of the principal and commenced a foreclosure action against Clearview, adding Manorville as a defendant a few months later.2

Although that foreclosure action was subsequently discontinued without prejudice, Manorville made no effort to avoid the mortgage it had given Clearview or to disavow the purchase transaction in general. It proceeded, instead, [464]*464to bargain with Stirling Homex Corporation for the purchase of modular homes to be installed on the land, filed a subdivision plan with the Brookhaven Planning Board, paid property taxes and interest on both mortgages, and sought financing for its development scheme. It was not until late 1974, almost two years after discovery of the fraud, that Manorville defaulted on its payments of mortgage installments and real estate taxes. These foreclosure actions resulted.

Answering the complaints, Manorville pleaded unclean hands, demanded rescission of the mortgages, and sought damages for fraud and breach of warranty allegedly committed by Clearview and DeLillo. In its appellate posture, Manorville posits that equitable estoppel3 should defeat foreclosure of the first mortgage because the Fund’s failure to record the extension and modification agreements enabled Clearview to perpetrate the fraud. There is nothing in the record, however, to establish that the Fund’s failure to record was intended to defraud Manorville or that the failure breached any duty of the Fund to Manor-ville. Manorville’s omission to make further inquiry concerning the unrecorded agreements, its acceptance of De-Lillo’s affidavit as a substitute for inquiry, the affirmance of the purchase, and the absence of any evidence of connivance by the Fund, have vitiated any potential defense against the Fund’s foreclosure. We turn, then, to the action to foreclose the second mortgage and Manorville’s counterclaims against Clearview and DeLillo.

II

Focusing on the effects of DeLillo’s fraudulent misrepresentation, Manorville asserts that its efforts to obtain necessary financing for development and carriage of the property were blocked by the existence of the acceleration clause. Proof of this contention was based, in part, upon a plan Manorville proposed to the Bowery Savings Bank to have the latter buy the property, subject to both mortgages, and then lease it back. Presented in February, 1973, the proposal eventually was withdrawn by Manorville without any action upon it by the bank.

[465]*465In June, 1973 the Brookhaven Planning Board rejected a subdivision plat submitted by Manorville under the existing half-acre zoning requirements. In August, with the express purpose of restraining development that might impair the effectiveness of its forthcoming master plan, the Brookhaven Town Board adopted a moratorium prohibiting approval of plats containing lots of less than one acre. Later in 1973, a preliminary plat containing one-acre lots submitted by Manorville was informally rejected by the planning board as too ambitious. Originally scheduled to endure for a single year, the subdivision moratorium was extended until May, 1975, when the town implemented the changes recommended in its master plan by rezoning Manorville’s property to a two-acre category. No formal plan complying with the moratorium was ever developed by Manorville.

In January, 1975 Manorville also failed in an attempt to induce the Long Island Bank to extend Clearview’s mortgage which that institution was holding as collateral. Conversing with an officer of the bank, a principal of Manorville’s general partner, James Gherardi, blamed the moratorium and the weak housing market for the company’s failure to develop the property. The record does not indicate that Manorville’s failure to obtain the Long Island Bank extension or the withdrawal of Manorville’s proposition to the Bowery Savings Bank were influenced by the Fund’s right to accelerate.

The moratorium and the housing market also were the reasons for nondevelopment Mr. Gherardi gave the limited partners in a letter written before the ill-fated effort to obtain succor from the Long Island Bank. To similar effect, Manorville’s real estate broker testified that his conversations with Mr. Gherardi in 1974 centered on the moratorium and the difficulties it created for development of the property.

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Bluebook (online)
88 A.D.2d 461, 453 N.Y.S.2d 750, 1982 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 17529, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clearview-concrete-products-corp-v-s-charles-gherardi-inc-nyappdiv-1982.