Appeals Court Upholds Yeshiva Foreclosure

Eliyahu Mirlis is one step closer to gaining control of the former yeshiva building at Elm and Norton Streets — now that a state court has rejected a foreclosure-case appeal pursued by a nonprofit controlled by the man convicted of raping him, imprisoned Rabbi Daniel Greer.

Connecticut Appellate Court Judges Nina Elgo, Ingrid Moll, and José Suarez issued that decision on June 20 in the case Eliyahu Mirlis v. Yeshiva of New Haven Inc.

Their 13-page ruling upholds a February 2022 decision by then-New Haven housing court Judge John Cirello that refused to reopen a foreclosure judgment for the 765 Elm St. property. Greer’s Yeshiva nonprofit had asked Cirello’s trial court early last year to reopen a prior foreclosure judgment to give it more time to come up with $620,000, which in turn would have allowed the nonprofit to maintain ownership of the property.

The June 20 appellate court decision also upholds a related April 2022 decision by Cirello that refused to allow the yeshiva to reargue the foreclosure-judgment-opening matter. 

The appellate court ruling comes more than a year after Greer’s nonprofit first filed the appeal in March 2022 (amended in April). It comes nearly six years after Mirlis first sued to foreclose on the Elm Street property back in July 2017. 

Last May, Cirello affirmed an ​“automatic stay” on the foreclosure, ensuring that Mirlis would not be able to take ownership of the property while the appeal worked its way through the higher court. 

The upshot: This new state appellate court decision closes for now one path that Greer’s nonprofit had been seeking to hold onto the former yeshiva property. And it nudges along Mirlis’s six-years-and-counting legal effort to obtain possession of the property as part of a larger bid to start collecting on some of the mostly unpaid $22 million owed him through a separate 2017 civil judgment against Greer and the Yeshiva.

Greer, meanwhile, remains in prison, where he is serving a 20-year sentence for raping Mirlis while the latter was a student at that very same Edgewood Yeshiva. (Greer has appealed the criminal case.)

“We are very disappointed at the court’s ruling,” the Yeshiva’s attorney, David Grudberg, wrote when asked for comment for this article. ​“The Appellate Court held in 2021 that the Yeshiva could post a bond of $620,000 in order to prevent the loss of the historic Yeshiva building, which over many years has been a key part of the Edgewood-Elm neighborhood. We presented evidence to the trial court that, with the court’s approval, $620,000 would be available and paid to the plaintiff in a week or less, but approval was denied. The Yeshiva will ask our Supreme Court to review this decision.”

Mirlis’s attorney John Cesaroni welcomed the three-judge panel’s ruling in a separate comment provided to the Independent. ​“We are pleased with the Appellate Court’s well-reasoned decision in affirming the Superior Court’s balanced determination not to open the foreclosure judgment entered against the Yeshiva of New Haven. We look forward to a prompt conclusion of this matter in the Superior Court.”

In the appellate court decision itself, Judges Elgo, Moll, and Suarez pointed out that four years had elapsed between when the Yeshiva first won the right to pay cash to maintain ownership of the property in 2018 and when Cirello refused to reopen the foreclosure judgment in 2022 to give the nonprofit more time to come up with the money. (As of August 2020, several related Edgewood neighborhood-based Greer-controlled nonprofits have been prohibited from selling properties thanks to a ​“temporary restraining order” in a separate ongoing federal court case involving another attempt by Mirlis to collect on the $20 million-plus outstanding civil judgment.)

The three appellate court judges found that the trial court under Judge Cirello ​“did not abuse its discretion” in denying to reopen the foreclosure judgment, and they cited the four-year lapse between 2018 and 2022 when the Yeshiva could have paid $620,000 to hold onto the property. It was never able to come up with the money in that time, and Cirello was correct to consider that duration when deciding whether or not to reopen the foreclosure judgment.

The appellate court decision reads in relevant part: ​“Moreover, the defendant has provided us with neither relevant legal authority nor persuasive analysis that the court committed an error of law in denying its renewed motion to open. To the extent that the defendant argues that, because the order did not include a time limit, it should be given a reasonable amount of time under the law of the case doctrine to obtain the funds needed to post the bond, we reiterate that the court considered the four years that have elapsed since the entry and affirmance of that valuation ruling to its denials of the motions to open. The court specifically stated that the defendant ​‘had months to come up with a plan to pay the full cash bond,’’ but continued to request more time to come up with the funds. Given our standard of review, we conclude that the court engaged in the proper review of the relevant facts and the entire record before it and, therefore, did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant’s renewed motion to open the judgment.”