State Street Bank and Trust Co. v. Lord
District Court of Appeals of Florida
851 So.2d 790 (2003)
After a series of assignments, EMC Mortgage Corporation assigned Hartley Lord's (defendant) mortgage and promissory note to State Street Bank (plaintiff), but when State Street sued to foreclose, it discovered the original note had been lost before EMC ever acquired rights to it, meaning neither State Street nor EMC had ever actually possessed the original note. The trial court entered summary judgment for Lord, applying Florida's statutory requirement that someone enforcing a lost note show possession when lost or acquisition directly from someone who had possession; State Street appealed.
Whether some jurisdictions that have not adopted the Uniform Commercial Code as revised in 2002 still require someone seeking to enforce a lost promissory note to show possession of the note when lost or acquisition directly from someone with it.