When the Empire destroyed the planet Alderaan in Star Wars IV, Obi-Wan Kenobi sensed “a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” When the Appellate Division, First Department decided Miller-Francis v. Smith-Jackson,1 there was a great disturbance in the Force known as stability in real estate transactions, specifically the enforceability of mortgages.
The Virtue of Stability
In Holy Properties v. Kenneth Cole Productions,2 the Court of Appeals wrote:
Parties who engage in transactions based on prevailing law must be able to rely on the stability of such precedents. In business transactions, particularly, the certainty of settled rules is often more important than whether the established rule is better than another or even whether it is the “correct” rule. This is perhaps true in real property more than any other area of the law, where established precedents are not lightly to be set aside.
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