The foreclosure docket has barely moved since July 31. That is not inactivity — it is a case whose centre of gravity has shifted. Everything that matters in the fight over 309 and 313 Clematis is now happening on a different docket: Webb, et al. v. Newtek Bank, N.A., et al., Case No. 50-2025-CA-012858-XXXA-MB, the suit Webb filed against his lender five months before NBL SPV IV moved to foreclose. On August 12 the lender side filed a 37-page motion to dismiss it. On August 17 a judge set that motion for hearing on November 9 — and until then, the foreclosure waits.
How the two cases became one fight
The sequence is tidier than it looks. Webb, Von Esselborn and RP Palm Beach sued Newtek on December 11, 2025 — a month after the missed November 5 payment, and five months before the foreclosure was filed. For most of the first half of 2026 the two cases ran on separate tracks with separate lawyers. Then, in late July, they converged. On July 22 Newtek Bank and Newtek Small Business Finance filed a notice of related cases in Webb’s action and appeared through new counsel; two days later NBL filed its own notice of related cases in the foreclosure. The new counsel is the same on both: Holland & Knight, which had replaced Cohn & Dussi on the lender side of each case within the same week. On July 31 the Webb entities asked the foreclosure court to consolidate it into this case, or else stay it.
From that point, the filings stop appearing in the foreclosure and start appearing here: Webb’s subpoenas to One Florida Bank and Partner Engineering & Science on July 30–31, initial discovery disclosures from Von Esselborn and RP Palm Beach on August 10, and then the motion to dismiss on August 12. The lull in the foreclosure is the shadow this case is casting.
“A desperate attempt to delay the inevitable”
Ten defendants moved together — Newtek Bank N.A., Small Business Lending LLC, NBL SPV III, NBL SPV IV, Newtek Business Services Holdco 6, NewtekOne Inc., and three individuals: Sean Filley, Anthony Zara and Glenn T. Maguire. The tone is set in the first paragraph. This action, the motion says, “should be seen for what it is – a desperate attempt by the borrower, its principal and guarantors to delay the inevitable foreclosure on the borrower’s property so that the borrower can continue to collect revenues from its bar, while refusing to make any payments to its lender.”
It does not warm up from there. The complaint “is not precise. It meanders circuitously over 204 paragraphs and 55 pages.” It “rambles and repeats.” It “conveniently fails” to address the conditions for construction advances. Count VI is a “kitchen-sink hodgepodge incorporating 200+ paragraphs without independent ultimate facts.” The attempt to hold Newtek Bank liable for 2022 conduct is “frivolous,” because NewtekOne did not acquire the bank until January 2023. And the whole pleading is “the cacophony constituting Plaintiffs’ Complaint.” The alternative relief request delivers the driest line in the file: “Many things can be said about the Complaint in this case, but providing a short and plain statement of the ultimate facts is not one of them.”
The $17.4 million the foreclosure complaint never mentions
The most consequential thing in the motion is not an insult; it is an accounting. Von Esselborn did not close one loan on October 31, 2022. It closed two, totalling $17.4 million: a $12,654,000 conventional first-mortgage “Senior Loan,” and the $4,866,000 SBA interim construction “Junior Loan” — the one structured to convert to a permanent SBA 504 debenture on completion, and the only one NBL SPV IV is foreclosing.
The motion states that no payments have been made on either loan since October 2025, on a project whose construction is complete and whose bar is open and trading. At closing the lender funded $10,597,683.17 of the senior loan — most of it, the motion says in a footnote, to refinance existing commercial real estate — and held back $1,674,205.33, itemised as construction ($971,645), contingency ($134,700), soft costs ($102,066.33), interest reserve ($437,000) and control and inspection fees ($28,800). On the junior loan, no project costs were disbursed at closing at all, and the borrower authorisation Von Esselborn signed says so.
The $1,000,000 that the lender says was never a cap
Webb’s central allegation is that Newtek promised millions in construction funding and then capped it at $1,000,000. The motion answers with the post-closing paperwork. Von Esselborn, it says, closed without satisfying the conditions — no building permit, no municipality-stamped final plans, no fixed-price construction contract — and signed a Post-Closing Agreement giving it 90 days to produce them, with failure deemed an automatic event of default. A First Amended Post-Closing Agreement (what Webb’s complaint calls the December 2022 modification) extended that to 120 days.
The $1,000,000, the motion argues, was the accommodation in the meantime — an amount the lender agreed to advance pending the missing documents — and Exhibit A to that same agreement states a “Construction line currently totaling $4,138,705.” The motion also points out that paragraph 83 of Webb’s own complaint concedes “Newtek released funds beyond the $1,000,000 cap.” Webb attached only certain pages of an unsigned copy of that agreement; the defendants have now filed the complete, signed version.
The warehouse facility, filed under “red herring”
A large part of Webb’s case concerns a mortgage warehouse facility between NBL SPV III and One Florida Bank — the argument being that its advance-rate ceiling is what starved the construction budget. The motion’s heading for this section reads, in full: “Lender Assignments Of The Loans And The Warehouse Agreement Red Herring.”
Its argument is that the loan documents never prohibited the lender from assigning — they refer repeatedly to “Lender and its successors and assigns,” and the only assignment restriction runs against the borrower — and that the warehouse advance rate (80% of an eligible first mortgage, 90% of a second) governs only how much One Florida Bank would lend to SPV III, leaving SPV III free, and in fact obliged, to fund the balance from elsewhere. “In other words,” the motion concludes, “the Warehouse Agreement has nothing to do with this case.” Three consecutive paragraphs make the same structural point in the same words: the complaint does not, “because it cannot,” allege that Von Esselborn was in privity with One Florida Bank, that One Florida Bank ever owned the loans, or that Von Esselborn was bound by the warehouse agreement. Webb’s complaint cites that agreement more than twenty times without attaching it; the defendants have attached it.
Two affidavits — and why Webb named a lawyer personally
The motion arrived with two sworn affidavits. The first, from Anthony Zara of Small Business Lending, is a 152-page document whose purpose is to put on the record the paperwork the complaint left off: the complete senior loan file, the warehouse agreement, and the signed first amended post-closing agreement.
Its first exhibit also explains something the docket alone does not. The October 31, 2022 closing instruction letter — the document controlling when and how $10.6 million was released from escrow — was written and signed by Glenn T. Maguire, counsel to Newtek Business Lending. That is why Webb, when he amended in March, named Maguire personally alongside Newtek’s chief executive and five other employees.
The second affidavit is Maguire’s own answer: 38 numbered paragraphs of denial, sworn in New York. He is a citizen, resident and domiciliary of New York who worked exclusively out of his employer’s New York office. He has never been domiciled in Florida, holds no Florida office, account, licence or property, and — paragraph 19 — “ha[s] not traveled to the State of Florida in connection with the loans, loan documents, assignments, warehouse facility, construction advances, fees, default, foreclosure, or other matters alleged in the Complaint.” He received no fee, commission or “kickback” from any of it; everything he did was “in the course and scope of my employment, in my corporate capacity, and not for my personal benefit.” The closing line: “I did not reasonably anticipate being haled into a Florida court in my individual capacity.” On that basis the motion asks the court to dismiss him under the corporate shield doctrine.
The April broadside: “under the color of law”
August was not the first time the lender’s lawyers reached for strong language. On April 15, when Cohn & Dussi still had the file — the same firm that would file the foreclosure complaint a month later — Newtek filed a four-part emergency motion: to strike unauthorised ex-parte filings, to invalidate service of unauthorised papers, to prohibit pro se corporations from litigating, and for sanctions.
It describes Webb’s original complaint, over 700 pages with exhibits, as “a meandering tome” whose “entire convoluted claim runs afoul of logic, and the parties’ clear loan documents and constitutes a baseless smear of Newtek to avoid repayment of a monies lent.” It accuses Webb — who is representing himself, and was purporting to represent his two companies as well — of the unauthorised practice of law, and of having “secretly filed twelve (12) further papers in the case, without notice or service of copies to Newtek.” Among them was a 56-page amended complaint adding nine new defendants — Newtek’s employees, loan officers and its chief executive, “all now named personally, all added in secret.” The motion’s sharpest aside is about the disclosures: “A disclosure is not a disclosure if it is performed without notice.”
Its central accusation is procedural and serious. Webb, it says, obtained summonses from the clerk on a 53-page First Amended Complaint, then had process servers serve a different, 133-page document captioned “Second Amended Complaint” — one never filed, and for which no leave was sought. “An unauthorized amendment is a nullity,” the motion argues. “Plaintiffs are serving their unauthorized amendment under the color of law.” Parties using the e-filing portal, it adds, “are entrusted with a responsibility to not forge, alter, or abuse the process lawfully issued.” A footnote supplies the motive it sees: “Plaintiffs’ motivation becomes more clear by the undisclosed fact that Plaintiffs’ have defaulted on the $17 million loans at the heart of the Complaint.”
Webb answered in person. His May 11 response in opposition attached his own declaration and, as Exhibit 1, a letter to him from James J. Webb, Esq., dated April 16. The court split the difference: Judge Caryn Siperstein denied the emergency hearing the day after it was sought, and on May 13 entered an order striking, granted in part. Whatever else it achieved, the April motion did not stop the case — the Second Amended Complaint was properly filed on July 2, and it is that pleading the August motion now attacks.
Parked until November 9
On August 17 the parties submitted, and Judge Siperstein signed, an agreed status order. It records that the pleadings are otherwise closed, that discovery has begun, that no mediation has taken place, and that counsel conferred by phone and email on August 13 and 14. It sets the motion to dismiss for a specially-set 30-minute hearing by Zoom on November 9, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. It leaves the case management deadlines untouched — motions directed to the pleadings close on October 7, 2026, and calendar call is not until September 10, 2027. It is signed by Holland & Knight for the defendants, by Ryan V. Kadyszewski for Von Esselborn and RP Palm Beach, and by John P. Webb for himself.
That last detail is worth pausing on: the two companies now have counsel, and Webb still does not. The pro se problem that Newtek raised in April has been half-solved, and half not.
So the shape of the next three months is set. In the foreclosure, NBL has a motion for an order to show cause why final judgment should not be entered; the Webb entities have a motion to consolidate that case into this one or stay it. In this case, the lender wants the whole thing dismissed, and a judge will hear that on November 9. Whichever motion is decided first will settle whether Roxy’s ends up in front of a foreclosure judge or a jury — and until one of them is, the quiet on the foreclosure docket is not the case going away. It is the case waiting its turn.
Note on sources: This update is based on documents obtained from the Palm Beach County Clerk’s eCaseView on August 21, 2026 — the 117-entry docket in Case No. 50-2025-CA-012858-XXXA-MB and the filings at DIN 71, 114, 115, 116 and 117. The affidavits at DIN 115 and 116 are scanned images and were read via OCR; figures and names should be verified against the originals. Everything described from the motion and the affidavits consists of allegations and positions asserted by the defendants. They are contested, no ruling has been made on any of them, and Webb’s claims are likewise unproven. Nothing here is legal advice.