Yes. A Massachusetts court can order a person who keeps refiling the same foreclosure fight to get the court’s permission before filing anything new, and a case filed without that permission can be dismissed. Here the Appeals Court upheld the dismissal of a former homeowner’s 2024 lawsuit against his mortgage company because it repeated claims he had already raised in 2019. This is an unpublished Appeals Court decision under Rule 23.0, which courts may cite as persuasive but not as binding precedent.
What happened
The homeowner’s mortgage was foreclosed in 2011, and he was later evicted from a single family house in Holliston. For more than a decade he litigated the foreclosure and eviction in the Housing Court, the Land Court, the Superior Court, the federal courts and the Appeals Court. In a 2019 Superior Court case against the mortgage company and others, the judge dismissed his complaint and then, in an August 2019 order, barred him from filing a new action in that court based on the same dispute unless he first got the court’s authority. In July 2024 he filed a new Superior Court complaint against the mortgage company, alleging unlawful foreclosure and eviction, without asking for permission. A different judge noticed the complaint had been accepted without authorization, found it involved the same dispute, declined to authorize it, and dismissed it.
What the court decided
In Mitri v. Nationstar Mortgage LLC, No. 25-P-120 (Mass. App. Ct. May 14, 2026) (Rule 23.0 decision), the Appeals Court affirmed the judgment of dismissal.
The court explained that the Superior Court has discretion to require prior leave before a litigant brings future proceedings, when that is needed to stop harassing, vexatious and repetitious litigation. It relied on State Realty Co. of Boston v. MacNeil, 341 Mass. 123, 124 (1960), and compared Sommer v. Maharaj, 451 Mass. 615, 621 (2008), which recognizes a court’s inherent power to enforce its own orders and manage its cases, including dismissal when a party’s conduct is extreme.
The homeowner did not challenge the 2019 order itself. He argued instead that his new case was a different dispute, because it was based on alleged violations of an Assurance of Discontinuance between the mortgage company and the Attorney General and on an unlawful eviction, not on the 2011 foreclosure. The Appeals Court disagreed. His 2019 complaint had already named the same mortgage company, had already alleged that the eviction violated the Assurance of Discontinuance, and had already asked the court to void the eviction. The 2024 case arose from the exact same issue. The court also agreed with the trial judge that the new case was almost certainly barred by res judicata and served no legitimate purpose.
What this means for you
This is a case where the lender won, and the lesson is practical. Courts give people a full chance to challenge a foreclosure or eviction, but they do not allow the same claims to be brought over and over in different courts. Once a court enters a gatekeeper order, you must follow it. Relabeling an old claim under a new legal theory does not get around the order if the facts and the relief you want are the same.
Res judicata is the rule that once a claim has been decided in a final judgment, the same parties cannot litigate it again. That is why the first case matters so much. If you believe a foreclosure was unlawful, the strongest time to raise every claim is early, and in one well prepared case, ideally before the foreclosure sale or at the latest in the eviction case that follows it.
If you are already under an order requiring permission to file, it does not necessarily mean you can never return to court. It means you must ask first and show the judge that your new claim is genuinely different from what was already decided.
What to do now
- Gather every court order in your foreclosure and eviction cases, and read each one for any limit on filing new actions.
- If an order requires prior authorization, file a request for leave with the court that issued it before you file any new complaint.
- Compare any new claim to what you already raised. If it rests on the same facts and asks for the same relief, expect it to be dismissed.
- If you are facing foreclosure now, get advice early so that all of your claims can be raised together and on time.
- If you are a tenant or former owner facing a post foreclosure eviction, raise your defenses in the eviction case itself.
If this is your situation, call Doubleday Law at (617) 575-2006 or tell us what happened. Housing Court deadlines are short.
