Court Opinion

ID: 9752229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:50:36.087072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:10.972680
License: Public Domain

STEIN, J.,
concurring.
I write separately because the Court’s conclusion in Part IV is not essential to the disposition of this case. In my view, the municipality’s failure to give notice to Remington of the in rem tax-foreclosure judgment, combined with Remington’s timely and successful effort to vacate the judgment, precludes the municipality from passing any interest to Sonderman.
Although the majority rightly concludes that the municipality’s foreclosure judgment was void for lack of proper service, it nevertheless treats that void judgment as though a bona fide purchaser could potentially acquire title under it. With the majority’s decision, the voidness of a tax-foreclosure judgment will not defeat a subsequent purchaser’s title if the order vacating the judgment is not properly recorded pursuant to N.J.S.A. 46:22-1. To support its conclusion that the issue of voidness is not dispositive, the majority cites two cases in which courts refused to set aside void foreclosure judgments because the owners were found guilty of laches and the subsequent purchasers had expended time and funds to improve the proper*113ty. Ante at 104-05, 603 A.2d at 5. See City of Newark v. (497) Block 1854, 244 N.J.Super. 402, 582 A.2d 1006 (App.Div.1990) (realty company delayed three years before filing motion to vacate tax-foreclosure judgment); Last v. Audubon Park Assocs., 227 N.J.Super. 602, 548 A.2d 236 (App.Div.1988) (court found that mortgagee deliberately waited eighteen months before challenging three-year-old tax-foreclosure judgment), certif. denied, 114 N.J. 491, 555 A.2d 613 (1989). Those cases are unperstiasive because Remington moved to set aside this foreclosure judgment in a timely fashion, as the majority indeed acknowledges. Ante at 106, 603 A.2d at 6.
Despite the absence of equitable concerns in this case, the majority implies that a purchaser’s good faith, by itself, can impart legality to a void foreclosure judgment. Prevailing authority is to the contrary: “If the execution is void, and not merely voidable, the resultant sale is absolutely void and the purchaser, regardless of good faith, acquires no title.” Raniere v. I & M Invs., Inc., 159 N.J.Super. 329, 336-37, 387 A.2d 1254 (Ch.Div.1978), aff'd, 172 N.J.Super. 206, 411 A.2d 719 (App.Div.), certif. denied, 84 N.J. 473, 420 A.2d 1298 (1980); see also Merewood, Inc. v. Denshaw, 139 N.J.Eq. 182, 50 A.2d 459 (Ch.1947) (bona fide purchaser did not receive title where municipality-grantor’s only claim to title was unconstitutional tax foreclosure), appeal denied, 142 N.J.Eq. 138, 59 A.2d 589 (Ch.1948); Sprang v. Petersen Lumber, Inc., 165 Ariz. 257, 798 P.2d 395, 400 (Ct.App.1990) (“When a judgment is void, the execution of the judgment is void, and title to land does not pass”); Noble v. Kahn, 206 Okl. 13, 240 P.2d 757, 759 (1952) (“The doctrine of the bona fide purchaser without notice does not apply where there is a total absence of title in the vendor”); 30 Am.Jur.2d, Executions § 441 (1967) (“[T]he title of the purchaser is not protected from the effects of a reversal of the judgment, where the judgment is declared void, since, if the judgment is a nullity, all proceedings based thereon, including the execution and a sale thereunder, are likewise void and of no effect.”).
*114From the outset, our courts have sustained void judgments only where the equitable doctrines of estoppel and reliance strongly compel such an anomalous result. In Garza v. Paone, 44 N.J.Super. 553, 131 A.2d 32 (1957), the Appellate Division first announced that void judgments would not be vacated where laches and estoppel sustain the judgment. Although the court denied the motion to set aside a default judgment as untimely, it nevertheless stated that the judgment remained “absolutely void and of no legal effect for any purpose.” Id. at 557, 131 A.2d 32. As Judge Freund noted in his dissent, that new rule created a legal paradox: a void judgment that could neither be set aside nor enforced. Id. at 561-62, 131 A.2d 32. Recently, the Appellate Division, recognizing that paradox, argued that default judgments void for constitutionally defective service “must ordinarily be set aside” absent laches or detrimental reliance. Berger v. Paterson Veterans Taxi, 244 N.J.Super. 200, 205, 581 A.2d 1344 (1990). In an analogous case, the Third Circuit held that statutes of limitations “are ineffective to preclude a claim of voidness based on ‘jurisdictional’ defects in a tax foreclosure proceeding.” Benoit v. Panthaky, 780 F.2d 336, 338-39 (3rd Cir.1985); see Register v. Kenai Peninsula Borough, 667 P.2d 1236, 1238 (Alaska 1983) (citing eight cases); Bogart v. Lathrop, 90 Nev. 230, 523 P. 2d 838, 840 (1974); see also Ford v. Willits, 237 Kan. 13, 697 P. 2d 834 (1985) (although laches “should ordinarily not be a defense to a motion to open a judgment that is utterly void, there may be unusual circumstances * * * where it would be inequitable not to apply the doctrine”). Thus, most courts sparingly invoke equitable principles to deny motions to set aside void judgments.
In the instant case, the majority transmutes the exceptional instance, when void foreclosure judgments will not be set aside, into the general rule, by holding that the failure to record an order vacating a void judgment in the county deed book will usually suffice to vest title in any subsequent bona fide purchaser. However, N.J.S.A. 46:22-1 was hardly designed to *115make void judgments enforceable. As one treatise argues, recording statutes do not generally cure defects in title:
A recorded deed, for example, may be a forgery, procured by fraud in the execution, executed by a minor, or never delivered. Any one of these defects will make the deed void, and the fact that it is recorded in no sense enhances its validity.
[Roger A. Cunningham, William B. Stoebuck, & Dale A. Whitman, The Law of Property, § 11.9 at 782 (1984).]
Allowing the recording of title to cure a void foreclosure judgment runs contrary to the principal purpose of New Jersey’s In Rem Tax Foreclosure Act, which is “to provide a method for collection of taxes, rather than being a primary tool to divest taxpayers of their property.” Township of Berkeley v. Berkeley Shore Water Co., 213 N.J.Super. 524, 532, 517 A.2d 1199 (App.Div.1986).
In all other respects, I join the Court’s opinion.
O’HERN, J., joins in this opinion.
O’HERN and STEIN, JJ., concurring in the result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI and STEIN — 7.
For reversal — None.