New York Court of Appeals holds that accrual clause does not delay commencement of six-year statute of limitations for RMBS repurchase claims

Courts RMBS State Issues

On October 16, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court’s dismissal of trustee RMBS repurchase claims against a mortgage originator on statute of limitations grounds, concluding that New York’s six-year statute of limitations for breaches of representations and warranties governed despite the inclusion of an accrual clause within the governing agreements.

In the underlying lawsuit, the plaintiff trustee claimed that the mortgage originator breached representations and warranties in loan purchase agreements relating to the characteristics and quality of the loans ultimately securitized into RMBS. However, because the originator sold the final set of loans conveyed into the RMBS in May 2007, and the trustee did not file suit until August 2013, the trial court held that the claims were time-barred under New York’s six-year statute of limitations for breach of contract suits. The trial court cited precedent set by the appeals court in ACE Securities Corp. v. DB Structured Products, which found that “a cause of action for breach of representations and warranties contained within a [RMBS] contract accrued when the contract was executed” because the representations and warranties were breached on that date.

On appeal, the trustee argued that the contractual language at issue was different from the language in ACE. Specifically, the trustee argued that the inclusion of an accrual clause stating that claims “shall accrue” upon an originator’s failure to repurchase a defective loan created a condition precedent to suit and operated to delay the commencement of the statute of limitations. The appeals court disagreed, concluding that “no substantive condition precedent was created, and that to the extent the parties otherwise intended to delay the commencement of the limitations period, their attempt to do so was inconsistent with New York law and public policy.” In reaching this conclusion, the appeals court explained that New York’s public policy “represented by the statute of limitations” and specific New York laws governing extensions thereof would effectively be abolished if contracting parties could circumvent it by mutually agreeing to postpone the date on which the period of limitation commences.