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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Courts - Still more on: In Kansas, the Mortgage Machine Backfires; MERS issue raised in Indiana

This Oct. 10, 2009 ILB entry includes a quote from the Boston Globe from Oct. 9th (from a Globe story still available)that began:

A court decision expected as soon as today could negate the validity of sales of thousands of foreclosed homes in Massachusetts, causing havoc for buyers and sellers and further stalling the housing market’s recovery in hard-hit areas.

At issue is proof of ownership at the time of a foreclosure sale. During the housing boom, millions of mortgages were bundled into bonds and sold to investors, a process that resulted in lengthy and twisted paper trails that can obscure ownership. Many lenders believed they could complete foreclosure transactions and later produce formal proof they held the mortgage.

That changed in March when Justice Keith C. Long of Massachusetts Land Court found that two foreclosures in Springfield were invalid because ownership of the mortgages was not clear at the time of the foreclosures.

Sheri Qualters of The National Law Journal has a story today headed "Defective Paperwork Strips Mortgage Holder of Foreclosure Rights." Some quotes [emphasis by ILB]:
A Massachusetts federal judge has upheld a bankruptcy court ruling allowing a trustee to treat a mortgage as an unsecured claim, which strips the mortgage holder of foreclosure rights, because of defective mortgage paperwork.

In a Nov. 17 order, District Court Judge Patti Saris affirmed a bankruptcy court order denying the plaintiffs' request to send a question of law to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The case is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. (MERS) v. Warren E. Agin, trustee.

The plaintiffs wanted the state high court's take on whether the omission of a borrower's name on an acknowledgement form, which a notary public uses to confirm the identity of the borrower, is a "material defect" that voids the mortgage.

In Massachusetts, deeds or mortgages recorded at a county registry of deeds must have a properly executed acknowledgment form.

One of the plaintiffs in the June 3 bankruptcy court appeal is MERS, which runs a national mortgage electronic registration system that simplifies the selling or trading residential or commercial mortgage loans. The other plaintiff is the actual lender, Countrywide Home Loans Inc., which Bank of America Corp. acquired in 2008.

The ruling concerned a mortgage held by debtor Mathew Giroux, who filed a voluntary Chapter 7 case in bankruptcy court in Massachusetts on June 27, 2008. The bankruptcy court granted the trustee's motion for summary judgment on May 21, which allowed him to treat the mortgage as a unsecured debt.

Saris agreed with the bankruptcy court that Massachusetts case law holds that the state "requires strict formalities in the execution of acknowledgements."

Saris also agreed with the bankruptcy court that Massachusetts courts are likely to follow a 2004 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, In re Biggs, which held that omitting the lender's name in an acknowledgement was not a "purposeless formality."

"Although the question of the acknowledgment's validity is a determinative issue, the Court finds the outcome in the state court to be reasonably clear," Saris wrote.

Cases about the issue have also cropped up in federal courts in other jurisdictions, said the trustee's lawyer, Jeffrey J. Cymrot of Boston-based Sassoon & Cymrott. Cymrot said he's also working on a similar pending case.

"It's largely due to pushing mortgages through the system," Cymrot said. "I don't think it's rare."

The case shows that sloppy execution of mortgage documents has consequences in bankruptcy cases, Cymrot said.

He also said the central question is analogous to that in cases challenging foreclosures because of defective documents that have cropped up in recent months. "It's related, but it's another type of sloppiness," Cymrot said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 19, 2009 01:26 PM
Posted to Courts in general