Separate Duty to Notify Revives Untimely Subprime Mortgage Claims
March 15, 2018
In a thorough opinion last week by Justice Marcy Friedman in Bank of N.Y. Mellon v WMC Mtge., LLC, the New York County Supreme Court upheld the timeliness of “Failure to Notify” claims arising from subprime mortgage-backed securities formed into a trust in 2007. To put it mildly, the mortgages were problematic (go see The Big Short if you have not already done so). The primary issue the court examined was the accrual date of causes of action asserting that the securitizer (Morgan Stanley) had breached its contractual duty to notify the Trustee of any breaches of representations and warranties that it discovered after closing. (Separate causes of action directly asserting breaches of the representations and warranties were previously dismissed as time-barred.)
Did these “Failure to Notify” claims accrue upon the closing of the securitization? Or did the claims accrue when Morgan Stanley discovered the breaches?
The issue was complicated by the Court of Appeals’ landmark decision in ACE Securities Corp. v. DB Structured Products Inc., 25 N.Y.3d 581 (2015), which held that a plaintiff cannot avoid the statute of limitations on a claim for breach of representations and warranties by pleading a separate claim based on the defendant’s failure to repurchase materially breaching loans. The Court in ACE reasoned that the repurchase provision in the parties’ contract was more akin to a remedy for the breach of representations and warranties, rather than a separate and continuing obligation. In addition, the Court in ACE was concerned by the prospect of “accrual dates that cannot be ascertained with any degree of certainty,” especially cumbersome in mortgage-backed securities cases involving representations and warranties relating to thousands of loans per securitization.
Justice Friedman also gave pause to consider New York’s policy against applying the “discovery rule” to statutes of limitations in contract actions. For example, in Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. v. Flagstar Capital Markets Corp., 143 A.D.3d 15 (1st Dept 2016), the First Department held an accrual clause in the governing agreement unenforceable as against public policy, where the clause purported to delay the accrual of claims until three conditions were satisfied: (i) discovery of a breach, (ii) failure to cure or repurchase, and (iii) demand upon the defendant for compliance with the agreement. The First Department held that such a clause “creates an imprecisely ascertainable accrual date—possibly occurring decades in the future, since some of the loans extend for 30 years.”
The court found these policy arguments “compelling,” but ultimately held that it could not impose the same accrual date as the underlying breach of warranty claims, because in Nomura Home Equity Loan, Inc. v. Nomura Credit & Capital, Inc., 133 A.D.3d 96 (1st Dep’t 2015), Morgan Stanley Mortg. Loan Trust 2006-13ARX v. Morgan Stanley Mortg. Capital Holdings LLC, 143 A.D.3d 1 (1st Dep’t 2016), and Bank of NY Mellon v. WMC Mtge., LLC, 151 A.D.3d 72 (1st Dept 2017), the First Department held that a “duty to notify” accrued independent of the securitizers’ obligations with respect to representations and warranties and therefore gave rise to a separate cause of action for damages. Unlike in ACE, this duty to notify could not be characterized as a remedy for the breach, because it was entirely an obligation of the securitizer and did not depend on any prior action by the trustee.
The court limited its holding to only allow “Failure to Notify” claims involving breaches first discovered by Morgan Stanley within the six-year statute of limitations. In other words, Morgan Stanley had no “continuing obligation” to notify past the date of first discovery that would otherwise extend the statute of limitations indefinitely. Nonetheless, the possibility of revising otherwise time-barred claims makes it worthwhile for parties asserting claims based on breaches of representations and warranties in a securitization to carefully read the agreements to evaluate an independent duty to notify post closing.