Hamilton v. Renewed Hope Inc.

This case concerns whether the appellee, Renewed Hope, Inc., exercised reasonable diligence in attempting to locate the appellant, Deborah Hamilton, and provide her with notice of the foreclosure of Hamilton’s right to redeem her property, a condominium, that previously had been sold at a tax sale. The trial court granted summary judgment to Renewed Hope, and for the reasons that follow, we affirm. 1. This is the second appearance of this case before this Court.1 As discussed in Hamilton I , Renewed Hope had the local sheriff attempt personal service on Ms. Hamilton of the notice of foreclosure of her right to redeem at Ms. Hamilton’s condominium address. Personal service was attempted at that address because it was the current address for Ms. Hamilton on file in the local tax and real estate records. Ms. Hamilton, however, did not reside at the condominium address, and the attempt at personal service failed. The record in Hamilton I did not reveal whether Renewed Hope had made any other efforts to locate the address of Ms. Hamilton.2 On appeal, we held that, after the failure of the attempted personal service, Renewed Hope, as the tax sale purchaser, was required to “make reasonably diligent efforts beyond the use of tax and real estate records in order to ascertain the address of the delinquent taxpayer.”3

On remand from Hamilton I , the trial court granted summary judgment to Renewed Hope, finding that Renewed Hope had made reasonably diligent efforts to locate Hamilton and could not do so, and that Renewed Hope’s notice by publication was thus sufficient. Hamilton has now filed this second appeal. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.