The bottom line is that foreclosures are all about collecting on unpaid debt. The only party who can initiate foreclosure proceedings that will force the sale of title to the home and then forcibly dispossess the homeowner is a party who owns the debt, is injured by nonpayment and who receives the proceeds of foreclosure as restitution for an unpaid debt.
In a pending case the attorneys for the “bank” argue that ownership of the debt is irrelevant.
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Article 9, §203 of the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted by the statutes of the State of Hawaii simply says that a condition precedent to enforcement of as security instrument is payment for the debt. Opposing counsel has proposed a daring, inventive argument to avoid producing evidence of something that he should be anxious to demonstrate: this his client is an injured party seeking restitution. Instead opposing counsel has advanced argument intended to divert the court’s attention into Dickensian (see Bleak House, Charles Dickens, serially published March 1852-September 1853 ) meandering in which the point of the proceeding is totally lost on lawyers who no longer remember the reason the matter is in court.
The statute merely states as matter of law what is already axiomatic: in order to bring a case to court the claimant must be an injured party and present an actual controversy wherein some act of the accused has produced such injury. Opposing counsel doesn’t like that apparently because he does not represent an injured party and yet still seeks the remedy which thus will result in the generation of unaccountable revenue to a party simple because they asked for it.
In the case at bar the defendant has been sued in foreclosure, presumably for restitution of an unpaid debt. She asks in discovery whether the Plaintiff is actually the party who has suffered an injury by way of asking for evidence of who paid for the debt and when that occurred. In another decade counsel for the foreclosing party would have happily obliged, thus removing any likelihood of failure of the action. But here, counsel resists, saying that such a request is not warranted since the action is not dependent upon on ownership of the debt. It seems to be the argument that the mere possible existence of the debt is sufficient for anyone to enforce it.
Opposing counsel is essentially objecting as a substitute for filing a motion to dismiss or summary judgment. Despite the convoluted and erroneous arguments proposed by opposing counsel, the fact remains that discovery is allowed on any subject that could lead to the discovery (hence the name “discovery”) of admissible evidence. Since foreclosure is by definition a remedy for the recovery of debt, it is impossible to fathom an argument against requiring the suing party to answer questions about that debt. Yet that is exactly what opposing counsel seeks to do with smoke and mirrors. Defendant is entitled to an order requiring a good faith factual answer because there is no basis to deny her request or sustain any bojection of opposing counsel.
While it therefore is not necessary entertain the “merits” of the supercilious argument advanced by opposing counsel, the following is submitted in an abundance of caution.
Thus the first erroneous element of the argument of opposing counsel is that it ignores a simple fact, to wit: the note is one contract and the mortgage is another separate contract. Opposing counsel is seeking to mislead the court into ignoring the mortgage contract and laws concerning conditions precedent and standing to enforce the mortgage contract which is a security instrument, despite arguments to the contrary offered up by opposing counsel. If a mortgage is not a security instrument then it will come as unwelcome news to the holders of tens of millions of mortgages on real property.
In practice there are some presumptions that arise from possession and rights to enforce the promissory note in residential mortgage transactions; but those presumptions can be rebutted when, for example, the presumption of ownership of the loan is rebutted by evidence or inference or legal presumption — i.e., a showing that the claimant is neither the owner of the debt nor representing any owner of the debt who paid for it — or by undermining the use of the legal presumptions arising from their claims of possession, ownership or rights to enforce the promissory note. Those legal presumptions are those that allow a court tor reasonably conclude that the claimant is the owner of the debt and therefore would be receiving restitution for an unpaid debt to satisfy an unpaid debt due to the claimant.
Opposing counsel seeks to remove the very purpose of such legal presumptions, arguing instead that ownership of the debt is irrelevant and that anyone can initiate proceedings to forcibly divest title and peaceful possession from a homeowner merely by showing possession of the promissory note — thus wholly ignoring the conditions precedent to enforcement of the mortgage. The question of whether the proceeds of a foreclosure sale would go to pay anyone who had suffered actual economic loss from nonpayment is thus rendered irrelevant. Opposing counsel wishes this court to divert from current laws of enforcement of mortgages to new “interpretations” that only require certain conditions that allow for enforcement of the promissory note in residential mortgage transactions while ignoring any laws regarding the actual mortgage.
The fundamental flaw in their argument is that if they were right, then a few other things would also be true. The motive is clear — to provide a legal theory in which ownership of the debt is completely divorced from enforcement of the mortgage. This opens the door to moral hazard and outrage. Foreclosure, which is enforcement of a security instrument, is widely considered to be the most severe penalty under civil law — the equivalent of capital punishment in criminal law. It results in the loss of homestead property. Opposing counsel would have this court believe that no statutory law controls the conditions precedent to initiating a foreclosure proceeding. Such an offering is both absurd and dangerous.
First, the result of their intentionally misleading argument would be that there is no provision in the entire Uniform Commercial Code governing the conditions in which a mortgage could be enforced. This argument, wholly specious, produces the anomalous result of having no statutory authority setting forth standards for foreclosure and leaving it entirely to interpretation of contract law. If this were true, then foreclosure law would be entirely common law doctrine and would lead to wildly inconsistent results.
This is not the case. Foreclosure law is consistent in all U.S. jurisdictions precisely because the standards are the same, to wit: only the owner of the debt can authorize initiation of foreclosure proceedings because only the owner of the debt is an injured party arising from nonpayment. Opposing counsel is attempting to alter this paradigm and enable virtually anyone with the right information to bring a foreclosure action, pocket the proceeds, and divest the homeowner of ownership and peaceful enjoyment of their home. Foreclosure is not and should not be an opportunity for entrepreneurs to generate revenue. Foreclosure is intended, by statute, to be strictly limited to a remedy (restitution) for an unpaid debt. Opposing counsel seeks to expand the remedy of foreclosure from restitution for an unpaid debt to the owner for the debt to a whole new concept — generation of revenue without regard to the owner of the debt.
Second, their argument is disingenuous. They are trying to get the court the court to assume that there is no UCC provision under Article 9 for enforcement of a security instrument against the owner of real property while at the same time they seek to use the UCC provisions under Article 3 to support legal presumptions that they are in fact owners of the debt and authorized to enforce not only the promissory note, which is governed by Article 3 but the mortgage which they say is not governed by anything. Thus they invoke the UCC for their purpose of invoking foreclosure procedure while at the same time they deny the application of the UCC to the actual enforcement of the mortgage.
Hence they seek to shift the focus from enforcement of the mortgage to enforcement of the note. In other words they want it both ways, to wit: they want the legal presumptions under Article 3 which removes any obligation to prove payment for the debt payment with evidence but they want to remove any possibility of rebutting those presumptions as being irrelevant, because now under their theory they don’t need to be or represent anyone who owns the debt by virtue of having paid for it.
Thus anyone who claims to possess the note and have the status of someone who could enforce it would also automatically be conclusively presumed to be able to enforce the mortgage. According to the argument proposed by opposing counsel, the note should be converted from being considered evidence of the debt to actually being the debt and the facts be damned. If someone else paid for the debt, they are automatically excluded from the foreclosure process — which means that the one party who actually might have suffered from nonpayment by the borrower gets none of the proceeds.
Hence the basic premise behind the argument of opposing counsel is to undermine existing law and replace it with a haphazard set of possible interpretations.
Next look at their convoluted attempt to state that Article 9 does not cover real estate transactions.
First, looking at the simple wording of Article 9, §203 UCC, if there was meant to be an exclusion or exemption, it would be there. No such exclusion or exemption exists. The argument of opposing counsel consists entirely of twisting other provisions of UCC, as adopted by the laws of the State of Hawaii, to mean that the law does not mean what it says when it relates to a residential mortgage. Without ambiguity, the court has no power to “interpret” the statute to mean something other than what is says. Yet opposing counsel seeks to have this court interpret the statute as being irrelevant thus rendering moot the entire concept of a present controversy, legal standing, and public policy.
The rest of opposing counsel’s arguments are rebuffed, rebutted and rejected by his own quotation from Article 9 §308 UCC which states as follows:
“(e) [Lien securing right to payment.]
Perfection of a security interest in a right to payment or performance also perfects a security interest in a security interest, mortgage, or other lien on personal or real property securing the right.”
In plain language, the statute defining perfection of as security instrument includes the word “mortgage,” which is defined in Article 9 § 102 as “(55) “Mortgage” means a consensual interest in real property, including fixtures, which secures payment or performance of an obligation. “Security Instrument” is defined in Article 9 § 102 as “(74) “Security agreement” means an agreement that creates or provides for a security interest” and “secured Party is defined in Article 9 §102 as
“(73) “Secured party” means:
(A) a person in whose favor a security interest is created or provided for under a security agreement, whether or not any obligation to be secured is outstanding;
(B) a person that holds an agricultural lien;
(C) a consignor;
(D) a person to which accounts, chattel paper, payment intangibles, or promissory notes have been sold;
(E) a trustee, indenture trustee, agent, collateral agent, or other representative in whose favor a security interest or agricultural lien is created or provided for; or
(F) a person that holds a security interest arising under Section 2-401, 2-505, 2-711(3), 2A-508(5), 4-210, or 5-118.”
Opposing counsel attempt to thread the needle by pointing to only one of six possible situations in which the rights arise of a “Secured Party.” A mortgage clearly qualifies as a security interest, as banks and attorneys for banks have argued for centuries. Their position on this issue has been constant and it has been codified into state law that is consistent throughout all U.S. jurisdictions. They have always been right, until they said they were not right.
For all of the above reasons the objections of plaintiff should be overruled, the Plaintiff should be directly ordered to answer the queries of the Defendant and failing that, the Defendant is entitled sanctions and the legal presumption that the Plaintiff is not an owner the debt, not a secured party, has not paid value for the debt, and this does not qualify as an injured party.
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Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, Eviction, evidence, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, jurisdiction, legal standing, Mortgage, Pleading, prima facie case, standing, Unlawful Detainer | Tagged: UCC 9-102, UCC 9-203, UCC 9-308 | 6 Comments »
