Foreclosure on a commercial real estate broker’s lien; The Commercial Real Estate Broker’s Lien Act (CREBLA); MCL 570.584(9)(b); Name of the “record owner”; Attorney disqualification; Settlement agreement (SA)

The court concluded that the “trial court properly denied plaintiff’s request to enforce a nonexistent [SA] and to disqualify” defendant-ASJJ Management’s counsel. But it erred “by dismissing plaintiff’s complaint on grounds that the lien on which plaintiff was seeking to foreclose was void because it did not name the record owner of the hotel property.” Thus, the court affirmed in part but vacated “the trial court’s order to the extent that it struck plaintiff’s lien and dismissed plaintiff’s claims premised on that lien. On remand, the parties are free to litigate whether ASJJ Management was an owner of the hotel property despite there being no genuine issue of material fact that [it] was not the record owner.” The court rejected “plaintiff’s wholly meritless argument that the parties had a binding [SA] that the trial court should have enforced.” However, it held that the trial court erred in concluding the lien plaintiff filed “was invalid and unenforceable because it did not name the record owner of the hotel property.” The court did not have to “define the precise contours of what the term ‘owner of commercial real estate’ as used in MCL 570.584(9)(b) means.” It held “only that MCL 570.584(9)(b) requires what it says—that a commercial real estate broker’s lien contain ‘[t]he name of the owner of the commercial real estate,’ which does not necessarily require that the lien contain the name of the ‘record owner’ or ‘the owner of record’ as that term is used elsewhere in the CREBLA.” The court found that the trial court correctly determined there was no genuine issue of material fact that ASJJ Management was not the record owner of the hotel property. But “it erred by concluding that this meant that plaintiff’s claim failed as a matter of law. MCL 570.584(9)(b) requires only that a commercial real estate broker’s lien identify ‘[t]he name of the owner of the commercial real estate,’ and the trial court never addressed plaintiff’s argument that there was sufficient evidence to create a question of fact that ASJJ Management—which plaintiff’s lien named as the owner of the hotel property—was an owner of the” property. Finally, plaintiff did not meet its burden of establishing that ASJJ Management’s counsel “should be disqualified on grounds that she was a necessary witness.”