Our clients are attorneys located in New Jersey who were joined as third party defendants in New Jersey state court.  The third party plaintiffs were attorneys who were engaged by Plaintiff, a hard money lender which makes short term loans with a high interest rate, to prepare loan documents and a mortgage related to the underlying properties which served as collateral for the $5,565,000 loan.  However third party party plaintiffs failed to record the mortgage and were sued by Plaintiff for failure to record the mortgage and sought $17,500,000 which represented the loan principal, interest and costs.  Third party plaintiffs then joined our clients on the basis that they likewise did not record the mortgage when the Plaintiff engaged them to collect from the defaulted borrower. They claimed the mortgage should have been recorded when the borrower and Plaintiff entered into a settlement agreement of the litigation that spawned from the borrower’s default on the loan.  However, the court granted our Motion for Summary Judgment and found that our clients did not owe a duty to Plaintiff to record the mortgage, did not breach a duty owed to Plaintiff by not recording the mortgage, were not joint tortfeasors with third party plaintiffs and were not liable for contribution or indemnity.