Today, Florida's Fifth DCA and Second DCA issued two seminal opinions; Klebanoff v. Bank of N.Y. Mellon, and Huntington National Bank v. Watters, which clarify the cloud of uncertainty that had engulfed the statute of limitations issue in Florida and provide a strong basis for lenders that are filing subsequent foreclosures of the same loan based on the same initial default date.
In Klebanoff, the Bank filed its foreclosure action in 2014 alleging that the Klebanoff's defaulted for failing to make the March 1, 2009 payment and all subsequent payments due thereafter. Klebanoff v. Bank ...
On June 12, 2017, the Supreme Court in Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc. unanimously held that a debt buyer is not a "debt collector" as defined by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ("FDCPA") if it is regularly collecting debts that it owns, even if the debts were originated by a third party and purchased after default. Rather, according to the plain text of the statutory definition at issue, a debt buyer must be collecting debts owned by (and owed to) a third party in order to be considered a "debt collector" and therefore subject to the FDCPA.
The Court's analysis examined the ...