Tydings v. Greenfield, Stein & Senior, LLP

Frieda Tydings (plaintiff) served as trustee for a trust created by Ricki Singer. More than six years after Tydings resigned her trusteeship, Singer filed a petition in surrogate’s court seeking an accounting from Tydings. Tydings hired the law firm of Greenfield, Stein & Senior, LLP (Greenfield) (defendant) to represent her, but Greenfield never answered Singer’s petition or otherwise asserted a statute-of-limitations defense. The surrogate ordered Tydings to provide an accounting, which Tydings did. When Singer objected to the accounting, Tydings, through new counsel, moved to dismiss the objections as time-barred. The surrogate rejected Tydings’s statute-of-limitations argument on two independent grounds: (1) the statute of limitations did not expire before Singer filed her petition and (2) Tydings waived the statute of limitations by failing to timely assert it. The appellate division affirmed on the basis of waiver without addressing whether the statute of limitations had expired. Tydings then sued Greenfield for failing to assert the statute of limitations. Greenfield responded that Tydings had to show that she had a valid statute-of-limitations defense and that the surrogate court’s rejection of Tydings’s statute-of-limitations defense on the merits collaterally estopped Tydings from relitigating that issue. The supreme court dismissed Tydings’s complaint, but the appellate division reversed. Greenfield appealed.