In no case has any successor to MERS ever been alleged or proven. Unless some third party acquired both the originator and the underlying obligation from the defunct originator (which never happens), no party can direct MERS.
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It is easy to skip over the main point in counterattacking MERS: the highest status it is said to hold is that of an agent who is a naked title holder with no power of transfer or satisfy the lien except that ordered by the owner of the underlying obligation, who is implied to be receiving money from the homeowner (the “borrower”). That is always the originator who, as we know, never funded anything or made any loan. The originator in most cases has gone bankrupt or otherwise doesn’t exist and it had no material assets at the time of its demise.
The carefully constructed wording in documents in which Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems or MERSCORP is cited refers to MERS “and its successors or assigns.” This has been used and confused as if there could be a successor to MERS without the originator making the change. In no case has any successor to MERS ever been alleged or proven. Unless some third party acquired both the originator and the underlying obligation from the defunct originator (which never happens), no party can direct MERS.
- At the time of the assignment of the mortgage or at the time of the appointment of the officer, who was the principal directing the MERS agency?
- Did that principal exist — i.e., was there an agency-principal contractual relationship between the parties who ordered the document to be prepared and executed and MERS?
- By asking, you produce evasion. When the evasion is challenged properly and timely, the judge has virtually no choice but to order compliance.
- When there is still no compliance (and there won’t be as all pro se and legal practitioners will attest), the court will have no choice if the matter is again challenged.
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The refusal and failure of the opposition lawyers to provide those answers after they have been properly and timely posed create a procedural conundrum for the judge, which in most cases is resolved against the claimant, to wit: if they’re unwilling to corroborate the presumptions arising from the documents used to present the claim, then they cannot introduce evidence of the truth of the matter asserted.
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The basic lesson from this is that presumptions are not evidence. They are assumptions that evidence exists. Once you ask for the evidence and the opposing lawyers refuse to give it to you, their right to use those assumptions, even as legal presumptions, vanishes.
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But this is ONLY true if you aggressively pursue the matter. The judge is a human being. He or she will initially presume the evidence exists and that the lawyers merely were negligent — until you pound on the subject and still there is no compliance.
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The relevant pleadings and motions include but are not limited to
- Motion to Dismiss
- Motionf or Judgment on the pleadings
- Demand for discovery:
- Request for Admissions
- Request for production
- Interrogatories
- Subpoenas for deposition
- Motion to Compel
- 2d Motion to compel
- Motion for sanctions:
- Evidentiary sanctions
- Economic sanctions
- 2d Motion for sanctions
- Motion in limine
- Objections filed pursuant to trial order
- Objections at trial
Filed under: foreclosure |
Excellent article Neil, thanks!
I am continually amazed at the fraud and complicity of the fake plaintiff’s lawyers in my case. Refusal to answer and produce documents in discovery, and refusal to produce witnesses for deposition. The lawyers should lose their law licenses for being a party to the fraud!