Kevin Schlosser’s latest commentary explains the courts’ disdain for attempts to avoid serious transactional documents that have been signed but not read or understood.

Here we go again … A new decision of the New York, Appellate Division, Second Department, covers an old theme, and, unsurprisingly, with familiar results (Dodobayeva v Rubinoff, 2025 NY Slip Op 05219 (2d Dep’t Decided Oct. 1, 2025). As I have explained in detail in many of my commentaries, courts are just not going to give much slack to those trying to avoid the consequences of legal documents that they admittedly signed, but neither read nor would have understood if read. It is frankly remarkable that these situations still find themselves in court, and at the appellate court stage at that.

The Basic Legal Principles of “Fraud in the Factum”

There are various ways to challenge the legal effect of transactional documents, and there are consequences that flow from these varying contexts. In certain situations, depending on the nature of the fraud asserted, the documents could be deemed by the courts never to have existed (“void”) or deemed ineffective or rescinded when appropriately challenged (“voidable”).

As I have explained in “Void or Voidable” in Fraud, Visited Again:

Forgeries Equal Void Transactions

As it relates to fraud, a document that contains a forged signature of the party who appears to have signed the document is simply not valid at all from the inception (the courts use the Latin phase “void ab initio”). In law, such a document is deemed never to have existed legally since the person who is claimed to have signed it and agreed to whatever is stated in it did not actually sign it and never intended to do so. That is the nature of the forgery. The legal consequence of the forgery is the utter non-existence of the thing forged. As the cases show, this actually happens rather frequently, unfortunately, with respect to deeds to real property. Someone forges the signature of the owner of the real property on a deed purporting to convey the real property to another. If the true owner did not sign that deed, the signature was forged by another, and the owner was unaware and did not consent or give authority to sign that deed, then the deed is simply deemed never to have existed. Anything that happens thereafter based upon that forged deed (such as imposing mortgages on the real property after the void conveyance) is not legally valid. That is the context of a “void” document or transaction.

Read the full blog post here.