A week after NBL reached for a fast-track final judgment, the borrower’s answer landed — and it isn’t an answer. In twin filings on July 29, the five Webb entities asked for more time to respond to the complaint and, far more consequentially, moved to consolidate the foreclosure with the fraud suit Webb filed against Newtek last December — or, failing that, to freeze enforcement of the mortgage entirely. Around those filings, the clerk spent the week bouncing NBL’s re-filed default motions against all four silent construction lienholders — again.
First, the calendar: Webb asks for more time (DIN 72)
The smaller of the two July 29 motions asks for an enlargement of time to respond to the complaint (DIN 72). It discloses two things the docket hadn’t shown: the Webb entities accepted service “by agreement,” and their prior counsel had already struck a deal with NBL’s lawyers to answer the complaint by August 3, 2026. Newly retained counsel — who appeared for all five entities on July 21 — says that isn’t enough time to review the case properly, and represents that NBL’s counsel “agrees to the relief sought in part.” The motion stresses the case is in its earliest stages and that no delay is intended. With the agreed deadline set to expire August 3, this one should be resolved quickly.
The real move: fold the foreclosure into the fraud suit (DIN 73)
The companion motion is the first substantive pushback the borrower side has filed in this case (DIN 73). Invoking Rule 1.270(a) and the prior-pending-action doctrine, it asks the court to consolidate the foreclosure with Webb, et al. v. Newtek, et al., No. 2025CA012858 — the fraud suit Webb, Von Esselborn and RP Palm Beach filed against the original lender in December 2025 — or, in the alternative, to stay or abate the foreclosure until that first-filed case is decided. Attached as its Exhibit A: the full Second Amended Complaint from the Newtek action.
The theory, as the motion frames it, is that the two cases are the same dispute viewed from opposite ends. The instruments NBL wants to enforce — the note, mortgage, guaranties, assignment of rents and the December 2022 modification — are the same instruments whose validity the first-filed action attacks. The motion alleges the lender side committed the first breach: it froze funding under the $4,866,000 construction commitment, used the freeze to extract an unauthorized modification, disbursed beyond the loan cap without a written amendment, swept $350,184.62 in retainage, and routed reserve and construction funds to affiliates — then treated the resulting exhaustion of funds as the borrower’s default.
It also turns NBL’s own complaint against it. By the complaint’s dates, the motion argues, NBL “sold and assigned” the loan to SPV III on October 31, 2022 — yet signed the amended loan agreement on December 15, 2022, when it was no longer the lender, putting its authority to modify in doubt. And it questions standing: the verified complaint describes “Holdco 6” as suing while alleging SPV IV owns the paper, and NBL SPV IV took the instruments after the alleged default — meaning, under § 673.3051, it took them subject to the borrower’s defenses. The constitutional kicker: foreclosure is tried to a judge, not a jury — and the motion argues a nonjury foreclosure ruling would improperly decide the very facts (ownership, authority, default, amount due) that a jury has already been demanded to decide in the first-filed action. The relief requested is sweeping: consolidate the cases, and stay any summary judgment, final judgment, judicial sale, writ of possession, rent enforcement or deficiency proceeding until the fraud case is resolved.
In substance, this is the borrower’s response to NBL’s § 702.10 show-cause motion: before the court fast-tracks a judgment on 309 Clematis, the motion says, the questions of who owned the loan, who broke it first, and what is actually owed belong to the jury Webb already demanded in the case he filed first.
The default scoreboard: four more bounces (DIN 71, 74–76)
NBL’s late-July re-run of its default motions fared no better than the July 13 originals. On July 28 the clerk declined to enter a default against Cemex Construction Materials Florida (DIN 71) for the same reason as before — Rule 1.500 requires proof that the default motion itself was served, and that proof still wasn’t on file. On July 30 the clerk rejected the re-filed motions against Skyworks (DIN 74), Southern Land & Building (DIN 75) and Tru-Steel Corp (DIN 76) on a different ground: the original summonses with proper returns of service aren’t in the court file. Four motions, four bounces — the second full round of clerk rejections in this case. The lienholders themselves remain absent; the obstacle is still paperwork, not opposition.
The court now has cross-cutting requests in front of it: NBL’s motion for a show-cause order aimed at a fast final judgment, and Webb’s motion to consolidate, stay or abate the foreclosure in favor of the first-filed fraud action. Which one gets heard first will likely set the case’s trajectory for the rest of the year — a fast-tracked judgment against 309 Clematis, or a foreclosure parked behind a jury trial. The Webb entities’ response to the complaint, meanwhile, comes due August 3 unless the extension is granted.