In a 4-1 decision, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the continued vitality of the state’s longstanding “first in time, first in right” rule when determining the priority of creditors to be paid after a mortgage foreclosure sale.
In Eastern Savings Bank v. Cach, the majority held Delaware’s pure race recording statute trumped the doctrine of equitable subrogation, which it said was irrelevant to the facts of the case and had never been applied by a state court to allow a mortgage lender of a homeowner’s refinancing to assume the position of the original lender.
