Our previews of the latest additions to the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil docket continue with BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP v. Mitchell. BAC Home Loans presents the following question: does waiver of a personal jurisdiction objection operate retroactively, validating everything which has already happened in the proceeding, or only prospectively?

The plaintiff in BAC filed a complaint of foreclosure in late 2009. In April 2010, the defendant having neither answered the complaint nor moved for relief, the plaintiff filed a motion for an order of default. Two months later, the plaintiff filed a second motion for order of default, as well as a motion for a judgment of foreclosure and sale and for the appointment of a selling officer. A few days after that, all the plaintiffs’ pending motions were granted. A judicial sale was held in September 2010. The plaintiff moved for an order approving the sale in August 2011. The motion was granted a month later.

On October 23, 2011, counsel for defendant entered an appearance and filed a motion to vacate approval of the sale, stating that "[t]o the best of her knowledge," defendant had never been served, had never received notice of the motion for default, had been told by plaintiff that her loan modification had been completed and approved, and had never received notice of the approval order. That motion was withdrawn a few weeks later. Next, the defendant filed a "motion to quash" the approval order, or in the alternative, for relief under 735 ILCS 5/2-1401 and 735 ILCS 5/15-1508. That motion was "stricken without prejudice" in early December 2011, but was re-filed the next day.

In April 2012, the plaintiff responded to the motion to quash, attaching an affidavit of service claiming that the defendant had been served by substitute service on her daughter, whom the affidavit named. The defendant responded to plaintiff’s opposition with an affidavit of her own, stating that she had no daughter and knew no one by the name stated in the affidavit of service. The Circuit Court entered an order denying the plaintiff’s motion to quash on the grounds that she had voluntarily submitted to the court’s jurisdiction by filing her initial motion to vacate in October 2011.

On appeal, the defendant argued that the Appellate Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal. Defendant had filed her initial motion to vacate within thirty days of the judgment of foreclosure and sale, but she then withdrew the motion. Each of defendant’s motions that followed were filed more than thirty days after the entry of the final and appealable judgment, so none had extended the window to appeal from the judgment, according to defendant. The Appellate Court disagreed, noting that the defendant’s third post-judgment motion had sought alternative relief under Section 2-1401 of the Code of Civil Procedure, thus triggering appellate jurisdiction under Supreme Court Rule 304(b)(3). The 2-1401 motion was not untimely because it challenged the underlying order as void, meaning that no time limit applied. Therefore, the Appellate Court proceeded to the merits.

On appeal, plaintiff did not contest that service on the defendant’s "daughter" was improper. Nevertheless, plaintiff insisted that by failing to challenge personal jurisdiction with her first post-judgment motion, defendant had waived any challenge to the court’s jurisdiction (the defendant’ s first motion had denied service, but merely asked that the order approving the sale be vacated, rather than that the entire proceeding be dismissed or service of process quashed). Thus, the defendant failed to comply with the requirements of Section 2-301(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure or Section 15-1505.6 of the Illinois Mortgage Foreclosure Law for challenging personal jurisdiction, waiving her challenge.

Defendant responded that even if her first post-judgment motion waived the question of jurisdiction, it did so only prospectively, validating only steps the court might take after the defendant’s appearance; it could not retroactively validate earlier orders and judgments. The defendant cited C.T.A.S.S.&U. Federal Credit Union v. Johnson, which held that a waiver of jurisdiction operates only prospectively. The Appellate Court disagreed, holding that certain amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure enacted in 2000 had provided that "all objections to the court’s jurisdiction over the party’s person" were waived by an appearance. The Court followed Eastern Savings Bank, FSB v. Flores, holding that plaintiff’s waiver operated both prospectively and retroactively, thus validating the court’s orders and judgment.

We expect BAC to be decided within six to eight months.