Court Opinion

ID: 9703574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:01:01.351606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:50.266797
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice.
I dissent. This is not an appeal from a judgment in a mortgage foreclosure action. Thus, the question here is not simply whether the Marras were entitled to notice of the bank’s intention to foreclose thirty days in advance of the filing of the complaint. That question of law would be dispositive if the Marras had responded to the mortgage foreclosure complaint by asserting the defect in notice.1 They did not. Despite having been served with a copy of the foreclosure complaint, the Marras did not appear. The foreclosure pro*196ceedings resulted in a judgment against the Apgars, and the sheriffs sale was ordered as a means of executing on the judgment. As in all matters, any questions of law regarding the propriety of the judgment were placed beyond direct review when the judgment became final.2
The majority acknowledges that a Petition to Set Aside a Sheriffs Sale is an equitable proceeding governed by equitable principles, but gives scant attention to the effect of this rule.3 The majority leaps to the conclusion that the common pleas court committed an error of law, inasmuch as the Marras had not received the notice required by Act 6 prior to the foreclosure proceedings. As noted above, however, inquiry into the legal effect of the lack of notice on the judgment in the foreclosure action was precluded when that judgment became final.4 Although the court might take that lack of notice into *197account in weighing the equities of setting aside the sheriffs sale, the majority errs in holding that the lack of notice as a matter of law requires the sale to be set aside. This result is especially anomalous given the fact that the judgment remains of record.
Because I find that the common pleas court acted within its discretion in denying the Marras’ Petition, and the Superior Court properly affirmed, I would affirm the Order of the Superior Court.

. I have no quarrel with the majority’s interpretation of Act 6. The Marras were clearly "residential mortgage debtors” as defined in the Act, being successor record owners who had given notice to the lender. Thus, they were entided to notice of the lender’s intention to foreclose at least thirty days in advance of the commencement of the foreclosure proceedings. Even if there was nothing the Marras could do to cure the default, by the terms of the Act they were entitled to notice.

. It must be noted that the Marras did not file a Petition to Open and/or Strike the Judgment.

. It is ironic that the majority cites Doherty v. Adal Corporation, 437 Pa. 109, 261 A.2d 311 (1970), in acknowledging the equitable nature of petition to set aside a sheriff's sale. In that case, the mortgagor sought to set aside a sheriff’s sale on grounds that the mortgagee had violated the local rule by sending notice of the entry of judgment and impending sheriff's sale to the mortgaged premises and not to the mortgagor's home. This Court affirmed the lower court’s refusal to set aside the sale. We noted that the mortgagor had visited the premises and seen that the locks had been changed and improvements had been made, yet did not file suit until approximately three months after the sale. "It was surely within the power of the court to withhold relief on the basis that the appellant had unclean hands in attempting to sit back and await the completion of the improvements and then profit from the alleged failure to give proper notice.” Id. at 112, 261 A.2d at 313.
If it is within a court's equitable power to refuse to set aside a sheriff's sale where the allegation is that there was a defect in notice of the sale, it is certainly within the court’s equitable power to refuse to set aside a sale where the defect in notice preceded the judgment, and it is clear that the party seeking to set aside the sale had actual notice of the foreclosure proceedings, the judgment, the sheriff's sale, and the fact that the sale had been made, yet waited until a month after the sheriff’s sale to file the petition to set aside.

. In at least one federal case, it has been held that the notice required by Act 6 is a jurisdictional prerequisite to suit such that failure to give notice deprives the court of subject matter jurisdiction. See Main Line Federal Savings & Loan Association v. Joyce, 632 F.Supp. 9 (E.D.Pa. 1986). In that case, the court granted a motion to dismiss the foreclosure action, removed to the federal court by the Department of *197Housing and Urban Development, which had been named as an additional defendant, citing to an unreported decision of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Delaware Valley Savings & Loan Association v. Mullin, No. 3150, November Term, 1984 (C.P.Phila. Dec. 17, 1985).
Whatever the validity of this holding, which has never been adopted by an appellate court of this jurisdiction, it is significant that the assertion of defective notice was made in the foreclosure proceeding itself, and thus the case never proceeded to judgment.