Background
Carrington Mortgage Services, a successor mortgagee, brought an amended two-count complaint concerning Hernando County property. It sought foreclosure and reformation of the mortgage’s property description to add a metes-and-bounds legal description.
Steven K. Jonas, as trustee of the property trust, argued that the reformation claim was untimely under the five-year limitations period in section 95.11(2)(b), Florida Statutes. The circuit court agreed and dismissed that claim as time-barred.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth District reversed. A claim to reform a written instrument based on mutual mistake is an equitable action intended to make the instrument reflect the parties’ true agreement, including by correcting an erroneous real-property description.
Because of that equitable character, the court held that Carrington’s mortgage-reformation claim was not governed by section 95.11(2)(b)’s five-year statute of limitations. Instead, the equitable doctrine of laches governs absent statutory modification. The case was remanded for further proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- A claim to reform a mortgage’s legal description is an equitable reformation action.
- Florida’s five-year limitations period for actions on written instruments does not govern that reformation claim.
- Laches, rather than section 95.11(2)(b), may govern the timeliness of an equitable reformation claim.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes enforcement of a written instrument from equitable reformation of an instrument that allegedly fails to express the parties’ actual agreement. In mortgage litigation, a defective legal description does not automatically make a reformation claim untimely merely because more than five years have passed.