TPS — Third Party Strangers in Mortgage Cases

I’m sharing the wording I use in my TERA and Case Analysis reports now. I think the benefit of this wording is that it fills in the blank on who is the real creditor (owner of the debt). Hopefully it answers the following informal question lurking in the context of mortgage litigation: “If the parties claiming enforcement rights are not the owners or representatives of the owners then who is?”

Those who have that question in mind are asking the wrong party when they pose it to the homeowner as if the homeowner had an obligation to present a credible narrative of what actually happened to their loan. And the strategy of the foreclosure mills is to keep the questions directed at homeowners instead of themselves so that their prima facie case is presumed and never proven.

Just to be clear — and to avoid confusion sewn by foreclosure mill lawyers — the owner of the debt would have the following characteristics:

  • Paid value for the debt

  • Expecting payment arising from the debt itself (i.e., in accounting terms the subject debt is carried as an asset that falls under the category of a receivable, in this case a loan receivable.

  • Unencumbered authority to transact any business affecting the subject debt .

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM. A few hundred dollars well spent is worth a lifetime of financial ruin.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM WITHOUT ANY OBLIGATION. OUR PRIVACY POLICY IS THAT WE DON’T USE THE FORM EXCEPT TO SPEAK WITH YOU OR PERFORM WORK FOR YOU. THE INFORMATION ON THE FORMS ARE NOT SOLD NOR LICENSED IN ANY MANNER, SHAPE OR FORM. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 202-838-6345 or 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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Here is the current wording I use in my analysis and reports:

Standards and customary practices in commercial banking, lending, investment banking and auditing require, at a minimum, a reference to the date and parties to a transaction so that the data can be confirmed. This is also required in courts of law under the category of “foundation.” No such references are made in the entire paper chain relied upon by the current claimant. The wording of each document appears to side-step the issue of an actual financial transaction and skips to memorializing the proffered transaction. 

Our conclusion is that the payee on the note is almost certainly part of a failed securitization scheme. It follows then that the alleged loan transaction is a table-funded loan, and described as both against public policy and predatory under REG Z of the Federal Truth in Lending Act. We consider it certain that all actual funds came from a third party stranger (TPS) in a transaction predating the loan itself and/or predating the erroneously implied purchase of the loan or both. Hence in this case the TPS is the party who paid value for the debt and is therefore the owner of the debt. 

Standards and customary practices in commercial banking, lending, investment banking and auditing require, at a minimum, a reference to the TPS and any successors to TPS with sufficient descriptive certainty to confirm the authority of those persons or entities claiming ownership, rights to enforce, or rights to service the subject loan on behalf of the TPS or its successors, if any.

In the absence of any reference or proof of payment, payment is not presumed under generally accepted accounting principles as published by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. The failure to reference actual monetary payment causes a rebuttable presumption in auditing that there is an absence of an actual monetary payment and therefore that the documents memorializing a transaction are fabricated, entitled to no legal presumption of authenticity or validity.

An alternative explanation is that the documents were not fabricated but prepared in anticipation of an actual transaction that failed to occur. Either way the conclusion is the same, i.e., that the documents refer to a nonexistent transaction and should be discarded.

The normal and reasonable presumption is that the “predecessor” would only have transferred a valuable ownership interest in the subject debt upon payment of money or the equivalent; the lack of payment creates a presumption that there was nothing upon which a claim for payment could be made. Therefore the transfer of a promissory note as “title” to the debt from a party who had no right, title or interest in the debt conveys nothing, and a transfer of a mortgage or beneficial interest in a deed of trust would also convey nothing.

Presumptions are intended ONLY as a convenience — not to alter a result. If they would alter the result then they should be discarded. If there are two different results — one based upon legal presumptions and the other based on facts both the auditor and the court should discard the presumptions and go with the facts. 

The only thing I would add is that the title confusion and the convoluted schematics of failed securitization are not the result or fault of any action undertaken by homeowners —- ever. The burden of proving a prima facie case is and always has been on the party making the claim or initiating action for relief through foreclosure of a security interest. In our system of justice that is black letter bedrock of all legal matters in dispute.

Such a party has not proven a prima facie case if the entire body of evidence is based upon various presumptions — unless the homeowner fails to object. The objection does not change the homeowner’s burden of proof; it changes the would-be forecloser’s burden of proof. Upon timely and reasonable objection the presumptions falls away and the foreclosure mill must actually prove the facts they previously sought to be presumed. Theoretically there is no prejudice to the foreclosure mill; but we all know that most foreclosures would fail if actual proof was required.

As for the cataclysmic end of the financial system feared by judges, lawyers and regulators, blind justice requires that the chips fall where the evidence points. Anything less allows the system to punish homeowners for the errors and misdeeds of the banks.

TONIGHT! How to confront legal presumptions and get to the real facts.

Thursdays LIVE! Click in to the EAST COAST Neil Garfield Show

Or call in at (347) 850-1260, 6pm Eastern Thursdays

 

Foreclosure defense essentially boils down to three major categories. Procedural errors, lack of standing and absence of an actual creditor.
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Procedural errors involve improper notice, improper accounting, and inconsistent documents.
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As for no creditor and no party with standing, it all depends upon the burden of proof decided by the judge. If he/she says the forecloser must prove their case with facts and not presumptions, then you probably will win. If he/she says you must prove lack of standing and/or the absence of a creditor then you must file for discovery and hope that the judge won’t sustain objections.
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But there is a middle ground that I have been writing about. It’s all about legal presumptions regarding facially valid documents and self-authenticating signatures. The New York case I wrote about yesterday explains it better than I do.
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The bottom line is that in our system any party who makes an assertion must prove it and the party against whom such assertion is made must have an opportunity to challenge it. If it is not challenged by pleadings or objections then the “fact” is true for purposes of the case at hand.
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In certain circumstances certain facts are legally presumed to exist unless they are challenged with at least some credible evidence that shows the presumed facts may not be true.
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Tonight we talk about how to deal with those presumptions and how much proof you need to undermine the presumptions and thus force the foreclosing party (if it exists at all) to prove its case with real evidence, testimony and documents that are valid and authenticated.
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Based upon 12 years of experience with this issue I have concluded with complete certainty that the named foreclosers are pretenders and that they have no right, title or interest in the loans. More importantly I have concluded that the lawyers for the named foreclosers do not have witnesses nor documents that can be corroborated or authenticated.
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This leaves ownership of the debt in the winds. The fact that the court is not given the information necessary to conclude that the party who initiated foreclosure is not the creditor and that as far as the case is concerned  no creditor stepped forward is not a problem for homeowners. It is a problem for the banks who want the courts to grant foreclosure to whoever claims it.

If it is their case, then THEY must prove it

As I have said since 2006, the burden of proof should not shift to homeowners until the pretenders have made their case. To get rid of legal presumptions homeowners need only prove a credible narrative (like probable cause) that the documents are fabricated or falsely executed. After that, what is the harm of making the pretenders actually prove their case?

The lawyers who flee from foreclosure defense cases are missing out on a golden opportunity. If this were a golf game the ball would have left the tee in a perfect shot. The fundamental aspect is that nobody can actually prove a claim on a debt, note or mortgage by proving actual facts because those facts are not present.

Defense lawyers spend too much time worrying that maybe the facts will show that they have filed a frivolous defense and not enough time researching objections to claims and proof of claim. It’s time to roll back the burden of proof where it belongs.

It is not the fault of the homeowner that the debt and the owner of the debt is lost. Homeowners had nothing to do with it.

The Franklin decision (see below) from 2016 is an exquisite exposition of the law as it was written, as it is understood by jurists and as it is opposed by Wall Street banks whose very survival is completely dependent upon maintenance of lies that were propagated long before the 2008 crash.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM. A few hundred dollars well spent is worth a lifetime of financial ruin.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM WITHOUT ANY OBLIGATION. OUR PRIVACY POLICY IS THAT WE DON’T USE THE FORM EXCEPT TO SPEAK WITH YOU OR PERFORM WORK FOR YOU. THE INFORMATION ON THE FORMS ARE NOT SOLD NOR LICENSED IN ANY MANNER, SHAPE OR FORM. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 202-838-6345 or 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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see franklin-appellate-decision-tirelli-2016

The 2016 Franklin case is, point by point, an independent corroboration of what I have been saying for years about presumptions and burden of proof. Unprepared lawyers for homeowners are the greatest contributors to bad law.
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The documents carry a presumption of validity. The signatures carry a presumption of authenticity. Both presumptions are weak and do NOT provide cover for the proponent of the document to step over a legitimate challenge. The homeowner does not need to prove the invalidity or inauthenticity such that judgment would be in favor of the homeowner BECAUSE the homeowner is not proponent of the document or the signatures.
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It is here that that lawyers for the nonexistent foreclosing party step over the real issue only because foreclosure defense lawyers don’t stop them. The presumption stands if not contested. But if it is contested, then the homeowner must only show enough evidence of inconsistency such that a court COULD reasonably infer that the document might have been fabricated and that the signatures were without authority.
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At that point nothing is decided. AND the burden of proof falls on the proponent of the document to prove its validity and authenticity step by step — something that neither the mill lawyers nor their “clients” could ever do.
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Bottom Line: Homeowners do not need to prove “their case.” They only need to prove enough to cast doubt on validity and authenticity that the would-be foreclosers must prove their case without the use of legal presumptions presumptions. In the end it is their case not the homeowner’s case. When you bring a case to court, it is your case to prove — not the other guy’s case to disprove. Remember that legal presumptions are strictly for judicial economy and not to actually prove a contested fact, especially where there is a credible narrative that is opposite to the presumed facts.
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I think judges around the country are now ready to hear and accept this message. Lawyers who are fleeing retainers to represent homeowners are missing the boat to both fame and fortune.

STANDING: THE CRUX TO DEFENDING FALSE CLAIMS OF SECURITIZATION OF MORTGAGE LOANS

Mortgage foreclosure is the civil equivalent of the death penalty. in criminal cases. Many court decisions have enthusiastically supported that notion and attached much more stringent rules to the enforcement of a mortgage or deed of trust than they use in enforcement of a note. That is, until the last 20 years.

If you begin with the assumption that securitization is false, you start looking at the cover-up. Banks continue to win foreclosures because the truth is counterintuitive. Tactically the homeowner does not need to prove securitization fail in order to block a foreclosure. If that was the goal you would need to know and prove things that are in the exclusive possession, care, custody, and control of documents of third parties who are not even parties to the litigation nor mentioned in correspondence, notices or forms.

Successful defenders know that the securitization is faked and use that knowledge to ferret out relevant grounds to undermine and impeach testimony and documents proffered by lawyers for “stand-ins” called “naked nominees”, “lenders,” successors by merger, attorneys in fact, etc. wherein each such designation represents another layer of obfuscation.

Legal standing requires that the party who brings a foreclosure action must have legal injury resulting solely from nonpayment of the debt. The Federal Practice Manual published by and for Legal Aid describes and analyses gives good guidance that should be followed up with competent legal research of statutes and  cases in your state.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult.

I provide advice and consent to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM. A few hundred dollars well spent is worth a lifetime of financial ruin.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM WITHOUT ANY OBLIGATION. OUR PRIVACY POLICY IS THAT WE DON’T USE THE FORM EXCEPT TO SPEAK WITH YOU OR PERFORM WORK FOR YOU. THE INFORMATION ON THE FORMS ARE NOT SOLD NOR LICENSED IN ANY MANNER, SHAPE OR FORM. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 202-838-6345 or 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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see Legal Aid Federal Practice Manual on STANDING

Published by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Rights

Here are some of the more salient quotes from the guide.

The law of standing has its roots in Article III’s case and controversy requirement.1 The U.S. Supreme Court has established a three-part test for standing. The “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing” requires the plaintiff to establish:

First … an “injury in fact”—an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) “actual or imminent,” not “conjectural” or “hypothetical.” Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to be “fairly … trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not … th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to merely “speculative,” that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.”2

So the ONLY party with standing to bring an action to foreclose on a mortgage is (a) the party who would suffer economic loss if the debt is paid (and the party entitled to payments on the debt) and (b) the party who would actually receive the proceeds of sale in a foreclosure action because they are holding a loan receivable reflecting ownership of the debt relating to the subject mortgage.

Both defense attorneys and judges have made the mistake of confusing standing to collect on a note, which does not necessarily require ownership of a debt, and standing to foreclose or otherwise enforce a mortgage which does require ownership of the debt. This is the law in every state under their adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC — Article 3 (NOTE) and Article 9 (MORTGAGE).

The cover for this erroneous conclusion is amply provided by the failure of homeowners to object resulting in default foreclosure sales. And further cover is provided by the fact that the delivery of the original note is presumed to be delivery of ownership of the debt. However, this is ONLY true if the execution of the note merged with the debt.

Merger ONLY occurs if the note and the debt are, in fact, the same, i.e., the Payee on the note is the same as the creditor who loaned the money. Banks have engaged in various illusions to cause courts to assume that merger occurred. But in fact, the substance of the loan transaction remains the same as what I wrote 10 years ago, to wit: (1) the sale of certificates naming an issuer without existence on behalf of the “underwriter”/”master servicer” of the nonexistent entity, (2) the underwriter taking the money and using it, in part, to fund loans through pre-purchase agreements (before anyone has even applied for loan) and through form warehouse loans that are in substance pre-purchase of loans.

Hence in all cases the money at the closing table came from the underwriter forwarding the funds to the closing agent. Since the money came from parties intending to be investors, the owner of the debt is (a) a group of investors (b) the underwriter or (c) both the group of investors and the underwriter, with the underwriter acting as agent. But the agency of the underwriter is at the very least problematic.

The underwriter may claim that the agency arises because of the Pooling and Servicing Agreement for the nonexistent “REMIC TRUST” to which the investors agreed. But the investors would be quick to point out (and have done so in hundreds of lawsuits) that the PSA and the “Trust” were sham conduits and fabricated documents to create the illusion that investor money would be entrusted to the named Trustee for administration within a trust, not a blanket power of attorney for the underwriter to use the money anyway they wished. It is the opposite of a power of attorney or agency because it arises by breach of the terms and conditions of the sale of the certificates.

While the standing test is easily stated, it can be difficult to apply. The Supreme Court has observed that “[g]eneralizations about standing to sue are largely worthless as such.”3

The Supreme Court also imposes “prudential” limitations on standing to ensure sufficient “concrete adverseness.”4 These include limitations on the right of a litigant to raise another person’s legal rights, a rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed legislatively, and the requirement that a plaintiff’s complaint must fall within the zone of interests protected by the statute at issue.5

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the burden of establishing standing rests on the plaintiff.6 At each stage of the litigation—from the initial pleading stage, through summary judgment, and trial—the plaintiff must carry that burden.7Standing must exist on the date the complaint is filed and throughout the litigation.8 Moreover, standing cannot be conferred by agreement and can be challenged at any time (e.s.) in the litigation, including on appeal, by the defendants or, in some circumstances, by the court sua sponte.9 Finally, plaintiffs must demonstrate standing for each claim and each request for relief.10  There is no “supplemental” standing: standing to assert one claim does not create standing to assert claims arising from the same nucleus of operative facts.11

The Supreme Court has held that, to satisfy the injury in fact requirement, a party seeking to invoke the jurisdiction of a federal court must show three things: (1) “an invasion of a legally protected interest,” (2) that is “concrete and particularized,” and (3) “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.”12

In foreclosure cases, trial courts have nearly universally found that a party had standing because of legal presumptions without any proof of ownership of the debt. The good practitioner will drill down on this showing that the “presumption” is conjecture or hypothetical and that there is no harm in making the foreclosing party prove its status instead of relying on presumptions.

One last comment on both judicial and nonjudicial foreclosure. In typical civil cases if the defending party makes it clear that he/she is challenging standing, the party bringing the action must then prove it. In foreclosure cases judges typically adopt the position that the homeowner brought it up and must prove the non-existence of standing. This is the opposite of what is required under Article 3 of the US Constitution.

The party who “brought it up” is the foreclosing party. It manifestly wrong to shift the burden to the homeowner just because the foreclosing party asserts, or as in many cases, implies standing, In fact, in my opinion, nonjudicial foreclosure is constitutional but NOT in the way it is applied — by putting an impossible burden on the homeowner that makes it impossible for the homeowner to confront his/her accusers.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DEBT IF THE COURTS APPLY THE LAW? The debt still exists in the form of a liability at law and/or in a  court of equity. The creditor is a group of investors who have constructive or direct rights to the debt, and potentially the note and mortgage. The difference is that decisions on settlement and modification would be undertaken by the creditors — or designated people they currently trust. And that  means the creditors would be maximizing their financial return instead of minimizing it through intermediaries. But there is also the possibility that the investors have in fact been paid or have accepted payment in the form of settlements with the underwriters. Those settlements preserve the illusion of the status quo. In that case it might be that the underwriter is the actual creditor, if they can prove the payment.

HOW CAN THE NOTE BE TRANSFERRED WITHOUT THE DEBT?

Here is an analogy that might help this counterintuitive process.

Assume I own a car. I enter into an agreement with my friend Jane to sell the car to her. I sign the title and give it to her. Afterwards we both decide we didn’t want to do that. Jane pays nothing for the car. Jane does not get the car. Jane never uses the car. I still have and use the car and both Jane and I disregard the fact that I gave her a signed title. She does nothing with the title. Later in a loan application she lists the car as an asset. Then the car is stolen from me.

Who gets the insurance proceeds? The question is whether the title represents an actual agreement to buy the car. And all courts that would boil down to whether or not Jane paid me. She didn’t. I get the insurance proceeds because I lawfully applied for a duplicate title and received it.

But Jane still has one copy of the title signed by me in original form. She has also made copies of it that can be printed out with the appearance of an original. So far, she has sold the car 42 times and taken out 7 loans on the car.

One of the people that received the title records it with the DMV. There is a problem with that. I still have title and possession of the car. The gullible person who “bought” the car has a title signed by Jane, who has produced evidence that she received title from me. One Jane’s lenders on car stops receiving payments from Jane’s Ponzi scheme.

They “repo” the car and we go to court. The lender to Jane has no legal title even though they have what looks like an original title that is facially valid. Do I get my car back or does the lender” get to keep it.

One step further: if jane’s lender was actually a co-conspirator who accepted the false title and never gave a loan, does that change anything? I ask because this is exactly what is happening in nearly all foreclosures. The named “successor” in title engaged in no transaction to acquire the debt.

Transfer of the note was without regard to transferring the debt because neither the grantor nor grantee owned the debt. If the truth comes out, the transfer of the note will be seen as a sham paper transfer and the debt will be owned by whoever has money in the loan deal. Hence transfer of the note is not transfer of the debt. By denying the transfer of the note, the burden of proof should be on the would-be foreclosing party to show it was part of a real transaction.

Confusion in The Courts: Pleading vs Proof

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-520-1688

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A lot of the questions that come in to me relate to the issue of whether the ability to enforce a set of loan documents is a question of law or a question of fact. The answer, I think, is both.

The confusion seems to be on the issue of pleading vs proof. As a matter of law, the courts are largely correct as to their ruling on whether the Plaintiff in a judicial state is fine with alleging bare statements of ultimate facts upon which relief could be granted. But where the judges go astray, based upon improper legal reasoning advanced by the banks, is that they apply the same pleading requirements at trial or even summary judgment.

At trial they must prove the transactions upon which they rely. If the allegation from the owner or the denial and affirmative defenses of the homeowner raise an issue of fact as to the authenticity, validity or enforceability of the paperwork relied upon by the bank, then the bank must prove the underlying transaction. If the homeowner does not raise that issue of fact, then the court is correct in allowing virtually anything in as evidence and awarding the foreclosure to the bank.

But that said, to return to yesteryear, Judges are supposed to actually review the paperwork even in an uncontested situation to see if there are inconsistencies or even something that jumps out at them this is plainly wrong. for example, if the default letter says that for reinstatement, you must pay $6700 in monthly payments to bring the account current and your monthly payments are $3100, the letter is defective. How many months are they saying you are in default? It’s a simple matter of division. This also throws off the date of the alleged default, so there is no compliance with paragraph 22 provisions.

Similarly, if the foreclosing party is saying they have rights to enforce, that is enough to plead their case. But at trial they must tell the story of how they came into the right to enforce the paper. It is this latter part where the courts have erred and where the reversals from appellate courts are coming from. The presumptions at the pleading stage do not apply to the burden of proving facts.

I think the courts are coming around on this issue but it must be presented properly. A thief can sue on the note he stole even if he forged a blank or special endorsement. He will survive a motion to dismiss although law enforcement might be waiting in the back of the room to arrest him.

The presumption at the pleading stage is that possession implies being a holder. And being a holder implies being a holder with rights to enforce, and potentially one might even infer that the holder is a holder in due course. But at trial where the facts are contested, the thief must tell the story of his possession and rights to enforce. The fact that the actual payee or holder does not know the note was stolen does not or should not shift the burden of proof onto the homeowner to prove facts that are exclusively within the knowledge and care, custody and control of the thief.

The homeowner must merely deny that the thief is a holder with rights to enforce.

Banks Brace for Pain: Statute of Limitations on TILA Rescission and TILA Claims

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

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TILA remedies and requirements actually address the “free house” complaint head on: If banks misbehave in material and important ways (as defined by statute and not in the minds of a judge or lawyer) then yes, the homeowner should get a free house. That is what all three branches of the Federal government have said and no re-interpretation of TILA rescission or TILA remedies will be allowed since last week when the Supreme Court unanimously decided that TILA meant what it says. Any Judge or lawyer who thinks otherwise is in fairyland. The fact that a Judge doesn’t “like” the result of a “free house” (as the Judge perceives it) means nothing. The Judge is required to apply the law as decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Practically everyone is asking questions about whether the statute of limitations starts running from the date the documents were signed on the alleged loan or if it could start at a later time. The answer is a grey area, but as pointed out by James Macklin last night on the Neil Garfield show, there is a legal doctrine called equitable tolling that could suspend the start of the running of the statute of limitations for TILA rescission and TILA claims.

“The equitable tolling principles are to be read into every Federal Statute of Limitations unless Congress expressly provides to the contrary in clear and unambiguous language, see: Rotella v. Wood 528, 549, 560-61,120 S. Ct. 1075, 145 L. Ed. 2d 1047(2000). Since TILA does not evidence a contrary Congressional intent, it’s statute of limitations must be read to be subject to equitable tolling, particularly since the Act is to be construed liberally in favor of consumers.”

Basically the doctrine says that the statute starts to run, unless otherwise provided in the statute, when the claimant knew or should have known or most have known of the grounds for, in this case, TILA Rescission or TILA claims. The basis of that is obvious to anyone involved with these fake mortgages and fraudulent foreclosures for 8 years like I have. The very facts that give rise to TILA rescission and other TILA claims, are intentionally withheld by the parties at the fake closing where the borrower signs settlements documents, the note and the mortgage.

The strategy of the banks has been to wait out three years and then pursue foreclosure and when the borrower raises TILA defenses, the answer is that the statute of limitations has run. With the recent unanimous Supreme Court decision that effectively smacked thousands of lawyers and judges in the face for re-interpreting basic law and the specific and express provisions of TILA, this bank strategy should no longer work.

So now if you gave notice of rescission within three years of the date of the fake closing, your mortgage is null and void “by operation of law” and the “lender(s)” are required to give you (a) a satisfaction of mortgage for county records (b) a canceled original note (c) refund all the money you paid at closing for points, fees, costs etc. and (d) refund all the money you ever paid for interest and principal on the loan. Your debt becomes unsecured and there is no requirement for you to offer them any money at all in order to have the TILA rescission (“I hereby rescind my loan”) be effective. If you EVER sent such a notice within the three year period then your mortgage was void by operation of law at that time — unless the “lender(s)” filed a lawsuit (within 20 days of receipt of your notice of rescission) seeking declaratory relief saying your rescission was not based on any mistakes, errors, omissions or misbehavior on their part.

So all those hundreds of thousands of letters sent back to borrowers saying their letter of rescission was not effective were wrong. Dead wrong. And all those foreclosures that happened anyway were wrongful and void. And THAT means that what I said in 2008 is now true — that hundreds of thousands of homeowners who sent notices of rescission still own their homes even though on paper their homes were sold to third parties. The only thing that could interfere with that conclusion would be a state statute that existed at the time of the fraudulent sale  that said that you have 1 year or some other length of time to challenge the title.

So now that we know that nearly all the loans were table funded and therefore “predatory per se” (REG Z) the question becomes when did the three year statute of limitations begin to run.

There are two schools of thought on this. The first one is simple, as one caller on the Neil Garfield Show pointed out last night. If the disclosures were intentionally withheld, then even the three day rescission might still be available because the deal never actually closed and because the disclosures were fraudulent.

But in any event the statute would start to run as soon as the “borrower” found out that there were multiple people involved in his fake closing that were never disclosed — all of which undisclosed parties were involved in serving as conduits or aggregators and all of whom were paid an undisclosed amount of money arising out of the “closing.” So it is possible that even though your loan was the subject of a faked closing in 2005, you might still have a right to rescind and should send the notice of rescission since it forced the burden of proof onto the pretender lenders. This is especially important in nonjudicial states where the borrower must sue to prevent foreclosure and there is confusion over the alignment of parties.

Incidentally to drill in the point that this statute has teeth, the “lender” must pay the borrower all money paid including what was paid to third party vendors. The loss falls on the “lender” for misbehaving. If it didn’t bother the US Government (Congress, President and Supreme Court) when it passed TILA that the borrower would get a “free house” why should it bother anyone else?

Rescission: Shifting the Burden of Proof

For more information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

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see http://www.foreclosuredefenseresourcecenter.com/top-f-foreclosure-defense-strategies-in-california/truth-in-lending-rescission/

I ran across an excellent article on rescission in mortgage cases that I think is a MUST READ for those who might be affected or entitled to use it. Check the link above. Make sure you check with a knowledgeable attorney licensed in the jurisdiction in which your property is located before you act, but I think there are very good reasons to send out the notice of rescission in virtually all cases.

From my reading of the Supreme Court’s decision and other cases the notice need only be a statement that the “borrower” hereby rescinds the transaction with appropriate reference to the loan number. It would be wise to attach the note and mortgage, in my opinion. It does not appear that you need to state your reasons and I would suggest you not do so. Basically the statute says you can rescind within three days of “consummation” of the transaction without a reason or within three years if the disclosures were wrong, inadequate or withheld. But the statute does not appear to require you set forth what disclosures were wrong or how they were wrong so I would suggest that no such statement be included.

In cases where the disclosures were intentionally withheld (table funded or third party sourced loans) the statute of limitations might not start to run until the date that you knew or should have known of the defective disclosure package. It also might not start to run unless you received two copies of your right to rescind with all the information filled in by the LENDER. Of course right there is a problem since the likely “lender” (the one who actually loaned you the money) was probably unknown to everyone at closing including the borrower. But that doesn’t stop the rescission. In fact, in my opinion, it supports the rescission.

So it is possible for virtually all the loans to be subject to the right of rescission which is meant to give the borrower a very strong remedy with teeth, since all the money, the mortgage and the note must be returned and the mortgage is void by operation of law as soon as a homeowner declares his rescission of the “transaction’ (which is probably nonexistent — something that TILA was intended to prevent).

The most interesting thing to me is the tactical advantage of sending a notice of rescission even if it turns out to be unsupported (disclosures were all there and adequate). It changes the burden of proof. Once the rescission is declared by the borrower, it is then up to the creditor to file a lawsuit (within 20 days of the notice of rescission) against the borrower seeking a declaratory judgment that the notice of rescission is not supported by the facts or should otherwise be declared invalid because of statute of limitations or other grounds.

Thus the statute of limitations also applies to the pretender lender. Since none of them ever filed a declaratory action that I know of (within the 20 days required by statute), every notice of rescission has, by operation of law, and as confirmed by the Supreme Court, rendered the mortgage void. This means that at best the obligation is unsecured and can be discharged in bankruptcy. Any subsequent foreclosure after such a notice of rescission is equally void in my opinion and it appears from the statute and the case law now that the notice can be sent anytime up until the mortgage no loner exists because of satisfaction or forced sale.

In order to file such a lawsuit the pretender lender would have to allege and prove the validity of the origination, including the fact that it was not a table funded loan. This is going to be mostly impossible for any of them to achieve. Strategically it is an opportunity to shift the burden of proof on matters that should already be within their burden of proof (but ignored by many trial judges) to the party seeking foreclosure or the party whom they purport to represent as the creditor. I am even wondering if the rescission should be stated in responsive pleading or notice of filing in pending foreclosure cases.

This might be the powerful tool I thought it was back in 2007 where the parties involved in “securitization fail” (see Adam Levitin) must stop everything and (if they do it within the time period prescribed by statute) actually prove (a) that there really is a transaction under that pile of documents they show the court and (b) that there was adequate disclosure of the real parties in their closing and real terms. Remember that the statute has a “tolerance” of only $35 for the the disclosed terms.

Comments are invited.

Bank of America Ordered to Pay $1.2 BILLION for Fraudulent Mortgages

“Given the current environment where robo-signing became institutionalized as a practice even though it is the equivalent of forgery and where fabrication of documents by law offices and “document processors” were prepared according to a published menu of prices, why would anyone, least of all a court of law, apply general principles surrounding presumptions when established fact makes it more likely than not that the presumptions lead to the wrong conclusions? Where is the prejudice to anyone in abandoning these presumptions in light of all the information in the public domain?” — Neil Garfield, livinglies.me

THEY ACTUALLY CALLED IT “HUSTLE”

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan ruled nine months after jurors found Bank of America and former Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone liable for defrauding government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) through the sale of shoddy loans by the former Countrywide Financial Inc in 2007 and 2008.

The case centered on a mortgage lending process known as “High Speed Swim Lane,” “HSSL” or “Hustle,” and which ended before Bank of America bought Countrywide in July 2008.

Investigators said the program emphasized quantity over quality, rewarding employees for producing more loans and eliminating checkpoints designed to ensure the loans’ quality. (see link below)

Now that an actual employee of the Bank has also been ordered to pay $1 Million, maybe others will start coming out of the woodwork seeking immunity for their testimony. There certainly has been a large exodus of employees and officers of Bank of America to other Banks and even other industries. They are all trying to distance themselves from the inevitable down fall of the Bank. Meanwhile the corrupt system is heavily engaged with financial news reporting. For every article pointing out that Bank of America might have hundreds of Billions of dollars in legal liabilities for their fraudulent practices in originating, acquiring, servicing and foreclosing mortgages, there are five articles spread over the internet telling investors that BOA is a good investment and it is advisable to buy the stock. I know how that system works. For favors or money some people will write anything.

THE BURDEN OF PLEADINGS AND PROOF MUST BE CHANGED

The question I continue to raise is that if there was an administrative finding of fraud by an agency of the government, which there was, and if there was a jury finding of fraud involved in the Countrywide mortgages (and other mortgages) why are we presuming in court that that the mortgage is valid?

I understand the statutory and common law presumptions arising out of certain instruments that appear to be facially valid. But I propose that lawyers challenge those presumptions based upon the widespread knowledge and information across the public domain that many if not most of the mortgages were procured by fraud, processed fraudulently, serviced fraudulently, and foreclosed fraudulently. In my opinion it is time for lawyers to challenge that presumption in light of the numerous studies, agency investigations and findings that the mortgages, from beginning to end, were fraudulently originated, acquired and processed.

Why should the filings of a pretender lender receive the benefit of the presumptions of validity just because it exists when we already know it is more likely than not that there are no underlying facts to support the presumptions — and knowing that there was probably fraud involved? Why should the burden remain on the borrowers who have the least access to the information about that fraud and who get nothing from the banks during discovery?

Forfeiture of the private residence of a person is the worst outcome of any civil litigation. It is like the death penalty in criminal litigation. Shouldn’t it require intense scrutiny instead of a rocket docket that presumes the validity of the mortgage and note, and presumes that a possessor of a note (that more likely than not was fabricated and forged by a machine) has the right to enforce?

In a REAL transaction in the REAL world, the originator of a loan would demand that all underwriting restrictions be applied, and confirmation of the submissions by the borrower. If anyone was buying the loan in the secondary market, they would demand the same thing and proof that the assignor, endorser or transferor of the loan had title to it in every conceivable way.

The buyer would demand copies of the actual documentation so that they could enforce the loan. These documents would exist and be kept in a vault because the fate of the investment normally depends upon the ability of the “lender” or “purchaser” of the loan to prove that the loan was properly originated and transferred for value in good faith without knowledge of any defenses of the borrower.

In short, they would demand that they receive proof of all aspects in the chain of title such that they would be considered a Holder in Due Course.

Today, nobody seems to allege they are a holder in due course and nobody seems to want to identify any party as a Holder in Due Course or even a creditor. They use the term “holder” with its presumptions as a sword against the hapless borrower who doesn’t have the information to know that his or her loan is likely NOT owned by anyone in the chain claimed by the foreclosing party.

If it were otherwise, all foreclosure cases would end with a thud — the loan would be produced in all its glory with everything in its place and fully disclosed. The only defense left would be payment. Instead the banks are waiting years to run the statute on TILA rescission and TILA violations before they start actively prosecuting a foreclosure.

What bank with a legitimate claim for foreclosure would want to wait before it got its hands on the collateral for a loan in default? Incredibly, these delays which often amount to five years or more, are ascribed to borrowers who are “buying time” without looking at the docket to see that the delay is caused by the Plaintiff foreclosing party, not the borrower who has been actively seeking discovery.

What harm would there be to anyone who is a legitimate stakeholder in this process if we required the banks to plead and prove in all cases — judicial and nonjudicial — the following:

  1. All closing documents with the borrower conformed with Federal and State law as to disclosures, Good Faith Estimate and appraisals.
  2. Underwriting and due diligence for approval of the loan application was performed by [insert name of party].
  3. The payee on the note loaned money to the borrower.
  4. The mortgagee on the mortgage (or beneficiary on the deed of trust) was the source of funds for the loan.
  5. The “originator” of the loan was the lender.
  6. No investor or third party was the creditor, investor or lender at the closing of the loan.
  7. Attached to the pleading are wire transfer receipts or canceled checks showing that the borrower received the funds from the party named on the settlement documents as the lender.
  8. Each assignment in the chain of title to the loan was the result of a transaction in which the loan was sold by the owner of the loan for value in good faith without knowledge of borrower’s defenses.
  9. Each assignment in the chain of title to the loan was the result of a transaction in which the loan was purchased by a bona fide purchaser for value in good faith without knowledge of borrower’s defenses.
  10. Attached to the pleading are wire transfer receipts or canceled checks showing that the seller of the loan received the funds from the party named on the assignment or endorsement as the purchaser.
  11. The creditor for this debt is [name the creditor]. The creditor has notice of this proceeding and has authorized the filing of this foreclosure [see attached authorization document].
  12. The date of the purchase by the creditor Trust is [put in the date]. Attached to the pleading are wire transfer receipts or canceled checks showing that the seller of the subject loan received the funds from the REMIC Trust named in the pleadings as the purchaser.
  13. The purchase by the Trust conformed to the terms and conditions of the Trust instrument which is the Pooling and Servicing Agreement [attached, or URL given where it can be accessed]
  14. The Creditor’s accounts show a deficiency in payments caused by the failure of the borrower to pay under the terms of the note.
  15. All payments received by the creditor (owner of the loan) have been posted whether received directly or received indirectly by agents of the creditor.
  16. The creditor has suffered financial injury and has declared a default on its own account. [See attached Notice of Default].
  17. The last payment received by the creditor from anyone paying on this subject loan account was [insert date].

When I represented Banks and Homeowner Associations in foreclosures against homeowners and commercial property owners, I had all of this information at my fingertips and could produce them instantly.

Given the current environment where robo-signing became institutionalized as a practice even though it is the equivalent of forgery and where fabrication of documents by law offices and “document processors” were prepared according to a published menu of prices, why would anyone, least of all a court of law, apply general principles surrounding presumptions when established fact makes it more likely than not that the presumptions lead to the wrong conclusions? Where is the prejudice to anyone in abandoning these presumptions in light of all the information in the public domain?

see http://thebostonjournal.com/2014/07/30/bank-of-america-ordered-to-pay-1-27-billion-for-countrywide-fraud/

For consultations, services, title and securitization reports, reviews and analysis please call 520-405-1688 or 954-495-9867.

RESCISSION REVIVED BY 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS

Hat tip to Ken McLeod and to Ron Ryan who argued endlessly that the former ruling was wrong in Arizona. Ron Ryan is a good lawyer and Ken McLeod is a good investigator. Both have years of experience investigating, analyzing and fighting illegal foreclosures.

Courts are catching on and as I have predicted, the ultimate determination of the merits of foreclosure cases are largely going to turn on the application of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). Previously this same court held that tender of the money was required to rescind a transaction — the exact opposite of what the Federal statutes and regulations required. Now, correcting its prior error, the court says that a cause of action and defense exists by pleading rescission. Any document indicating the intent to rescind is sufficient.

The purpose of the TILA provision was to put the burden on the lender to prove that they had complied with all aspects of TILA in providing adequate disclosure and otherwise performing those acts required for a valid closing. If the defense is that the loan contract was not completed because of lack of consideration or other violations of TILA or RESPA, then the appropriate action is to send a rescission letter. It then falls on the “lender” to file an action within 20 days to object to the rescission or return all money paid by the borrower and to file a satisfaction of mortgage along with returning the canceled note. And since the allegation of no consideration leaves nothing to be tendered “back”, there is no impediment to going forward with discovery.

This forces “lenders” to essentially file a judicial foreclosure suit and prove they made the loan, they have the right paperwork and made the right disclosures. Table funded loans are going to give them a problem since Reg Z says that any pattern of conduct with table-funded loans is “predatory per se,” it is hard to imagine that this decision won’t stop the “lenders” dead in their tracks.

The requirement of tender assumed that the “lender” had actually made the loan and was the source of funds. Now the Courts are starting to realize that there was a switch at closing with the borrower and very likely a switch at closing with the real lenders — the investors who thought they were buying valuable mortgage bonds. With the borrowers the closing agent took money from an undisclosed party and then had the borrower sign documents in favor of another party. With the investors, the investment bank took money from the investors and instead of funding the trust, used the money and the documents from closing as though it were their own.

Hence the need to fabricate endorsements, assignments etc. If the “securitization” of the loan had taken place there would be a chain of monetary transactions leading up to the ultimate transfer to the trust who would have issued payment for the loan. There would have been no need to fabricate, forge, or robosign documents and certainly no loss of loans due to destruction or misplacement, because the documents would have been forwarded to the named Depository.

The result was that the burden was placed on borrowers with the least access to the real information on the loan and an easy path of defense to the party with the most access to the real facts of the loans and alleged transfers of the loan. TILA was meant to level the playing field. If the borrower invoked rescission without right, then there were consequences. This law was passed to prevent predatory lenders escaping the consequences of illegal actions simply because they had greater resources, sophistication and factual knowledge.

Be careful here. There are several types of rescission — 3 Day, 3 Year and common law. Consult with an attorney who is licensed to practice in the jurisdiction in which your property is located.

For more information call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

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Merritt v. Countrywide Financial Corp.

9th circuit opinion Issued July 16, 2014

Summary: Plaintiffs filed suit against Countrywide and others involved in their residential mortgage, alleging violations of numerous federal statutes. The district court dismissed the claims with prejudice and plaintiffs appealed. The court held that plaintiffs can state a claim for rescission under the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), 15 U.S.C. 1601 et seq., without pleading that they have tendered, or that they have the ability to tender, the value of their loan; only at the summary judgment stage may a court order the statutory sequence altered and require tender before rescission – and then only on a case-by-case basis; and, therefore, the court reversed the district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ rescission claim and remanded for further proceedings. The court held that, although the limitations period in the Real Estate Settlement Practices Act (RESPA), 12 U.S.C. 2614, ordinarily runs from the date of the alleged RESPA violation, the doctrine of equitable tolling may, in the appropriate circumstances, suspend the limitations period until the borrower discovers or had reasonable opportunity to discover the violation; just as for TILA claims, district courts may evaluate RESPA claims case-by-case; and, therefore, in this case, the court vacated the dismissal of plaintiffs’ Section 8 of RESPA claims on limitations grounds and remanded for reconsideration.

Merritt v Countryside 9th circuit 09-17678-2014-07-16

 

Here it is: Nonjudicial Foreclosure Violates Due Process in Complex Structured Finance Transactions

No, there isn’t a case yet. But here is my argument.

The main point is that we are forced to accept the burden of disproving a case that had not been filed — the very essence of nonjudicial foreclosure. In order to comply with due process, a simple denial of the facts and legal authority to foreclosure should be sufficient to force the case into a courtroom where the parties are realigned with the so-called new beneficiary is the Plaintiff and the homeowner is the Defendant — since it is the “beneficiary” who is seeking affirmative relief.

But the way it is done and required to be done, the Plaintiff must file an attack on a case that has never been alleged anywhere in or out of court. The new beneficiary anoints itself, files a fraudulent substitution of trustee because the old one would never go along with it, and then files a notice of default and notice of sale all on the premise that they have the necessary proof and documents to support what could have been an action in foreclosure brought by them in a judicial manner, for which there is adequate provision in California law.

Instead nonjudicial foreclosure is being used to sell property under circumstances where the alleged beneficiary under the deed of trust could never prevail in a court proceeding. Nonjudicial foreclosure was meant to be an expedient method of dealing with the vast majority of foreclosures when the statute was passed. In that vast majority, the usual procedure was complaint, default, judgment and then sale with at least one hearing in between. Nearly all foreclosures were resolved that way and it become more of a ministerial act for Judges than an actual trier of fact or judge of procedural rights and wrongs.

But the situation is changed. The corruption on Wall Street has been systemic resulting in whole sale fraudulent fabricated forged documents together with perjury by affidavit and even live testimony. Contrary to the consensus supported by the banks, these cases are complex because the party seeking affirmative relief — i.e., the new “beneficiary” is following a complex script established long before the homeowner ever applied for a loan or was solicited to finance her property.

The San Francisco study concluded, like dozens of other studies across the country that most of the foreclosures were resolved in favor of “strangers to the transaction.” By definition, the use of several layers of companies and multiple sets of documents defining two separate deals (one with the investor lenders and one with the borrower, with the only party in common being the broker dealer selling mortgage bonds and their controlled entities) has turned the mundane into highly complex litigation that has no venue. In non-judicial foreclosures the Trustee is the party who acts to sell the property under instructions from the beneficiary and does so without inquiry and without paying any attention to the obvious conflict between the title record, the securitization record, the homeowner’s position and the prior record owner of the loan.

The Trustee has no power to conduct a hearing, administrative or judicial, and so the dispute remains unresolved while the Trustee proceeds to sell the property knowing that the homeowner has raised objections. Under normal circumstances under existing common law and statutory authority, the Trustee would simply bring the matter to court in an action for interpleader saying there is a dispute that he doesn’t have the power to resolve. You might think this would clog the court system. That is not the case, although some effort by the banks would be made to do just that. Under existing common law and statutory law, the beneficiary would then need to file a complaint, verified, sworn with real exhibits and that are subject to real scrutiny before any burden of proof would shift to the homeowner. And as complex as these transactions are they all are subject to simple rules concerning financial transactions. If there was no money in the alleged transaction then the allegation of a transaction is false.

It was and remains a mistake to allow such loans to be foreclosed through any means other than strictly judicial where the “beneficiary” must allege and prove ownership and the balance due on the loan owed to THAT beneficiary. Requiring homeowners with zero sophistication in finance and litigation to bear the initial burden of proof in such highly complex structured finance schemes defies logic and common sense as well as being violative of due process in the application of the nonjudicial statutes to these allegedly securitized loans.

By forcing the parties and judges who sit on the bench to treat these complex issues as though they were simple cases, the enabling statutes for nonjudicial foreclosure are being applied unconstitutionally.

Banks Throw $20 Billion at Securitized Debt Market to Avoid Markdowns

Bloomberg Reports that the big banks are borrowing big time money using money market funds as source money for financing repurchase agreements. This stirs the obvious conclusion that the mortgage bonds — and hence the claim on underlying loans — are in constant movement making the proof problems in foreclosure proceedings difficult at best.

The underlying theme is that there is tremendous pressure to make good on the mortgage bonds that never actually existed issued by REMIC trusts that were never actually funded who made claims on loans that never actually existed. All that is why I say you should argue away from the presumption and keep the burden of persuasion or burden of proof on the party who has exclusive access to the actual proof of payment and proof of loss.

The banks are still claiming assets on their balance sheet that are either without value of any kind or something close to zero. If I was wrong about this, the banks would be flooding all the courts with proof of payment (canceled check, wire transfer receipt etc) and the contest with borrowers would be over.

Instead they argue for the presumption that attaches to the “holder” and mislead the court into thinking that possession is the same as being the holder. It isn’t. The holder is someone who acquired the instrument “for value.” By denying the holder status and contesting whether there was any consideration for the endorsement or assignment of the loan, you are putting them in position to force them to come clean and show that there was NO consideration, NO money paid, and hence they are not holders in any sense of the word.

If you research the law in your state you will find that the prima facie case required from the would-be forecloser depends factually upon whether they are an injured party. If they didn’t pay anything for the origination or transfer of the loan, they can’t be an injured party. They must also show that their injury stems from the breach of the borrower and the breach of some intermediary. That is where the repurchase agreements and financing for all those purchases comes into the picture.

So far the banks have been largely successful in using bootstrap reasoning that a possessor is a holder and a holder is therefore a holder in due course by operation of the presumptions arising from the Uniform Commercial Code. And since normally a presumption shifts the burden to the other side (the borrower in this case) to come up with legally admissible evidence that the facts do not support the presumption, the borrower or borrower’s counsel sits there in the courtroom stumped.

Further research, however, will show that if the facts needed to prove the presumption to be unsupported by facts are in the sole care, custody and control of the claiming party, you are entitled to conduct discovery and that means they must come up with the actual cancelled check, wire transfer receipt, wire transfer instructions etc. The would-be forecloser cannot block discovery by asserting the presumption arising from their own self-serving allegation of holder status.

In this case the presumption arising from the allegation that the would-be forecloser is a “holder” is defeated by mere denial because it is ONLY the would-be forecloser that has access to the the actual proof of payment and proof of loss. I remind you again that the debt is not the note and the note is not the mortgage. They are all separate issues.

This is becoming painfully obvious as reports are coming in from across the country indicating that courts at all levels and legislatures are under intense pressure to find a loophole through which the mega banks can escape the truth, to wit: that they are holding worthless paper and that the only transaction that ever actually occurred was the one between the investors and the borrowers without either  of those parties in interest being aware of the slight of hand pulled by the banks. The banks diverted the money invested by pension funds from the REMIC trusts into their own pockets. The banks diverted the documents that would have solidified the interest of the investors in those loans to themselves.

And let there be no mistake that the banks planned the whole thing out ahead of time. The only reason why MERS and other private label title databases were necessary was to hide the fact that the banks were trading the investments made by pension funds as if they were their own. Otherwise there would have been no reason to have anyone’s name on the note or mortgage other than the asset pool designated as a REMIC trust.

These exotic instruments are being tested by the marketplace and they are failing miserably. So the banks are throwing tens of billions of dollars to refinance the repurchase of the derivatives that were worthless in the first place. It’s worth it to them to retain the trillions of dollars they are claiming as assets that are unsupported by any actual monetary transactions. AND THAT is why in the final analysis, after they have beaten you to a pulp in court, if you are still standing, you get some amazing offers of settlement that actually are still fractions of a cent on the dollar.

Banking giants lead repo funding of securitized debt
http://www.housingwire.com/fastnews/2013/04/16/banking-giants-lead-repo-funding-securitized-debt

Woman Wins Home and Forecloses on Wells Fargo

What’s the Next Step? Consult with Neil Garfield

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For assistance with presenting a case for wrongful foreclosure, please call 520-405-1688, customer service, who will put you in touch with an attorney in the states of Florida, California, Ohio, and Nevada. (NOTE: Chapter 11 may be easier than you think).

Editor’s Comment: We have seen some of these stories before. What is disconcerting is that the press is not getting the point — some homeowners are winning their cases and getting their house free and clear. The reason is simple: if you try to make the case that you should get a free house, then you are going to lose. But if you attack the would-be forecloser where it hurts, then your chances of getting a favorable result are immeasurably increased. Mark Stopa got 14 Judges to (a) deny the forecloser’s motion for summary judgment and (b) grant final summary judgment to the homeowner. It does happen.

In the final analysis the strategy and tactics are the same as in any civil case — deny each and every allegation that you know is absolutely true, like your name. If you don’t know if the note and mortgage are legitimate or if they are showing a copy of the note and mortgage (or deed of trust) that might be fabricated, deny it. The burden is on the party seeking affirmative relief. Too many times, I see homeowners and attorneys give away the store when they are asked whether there is any issue about the obligation, note or mortgage. Their reply is no “but”….

The fact is there is no “but.” You either deny their right to foreclose or you admit it. If you admit it, then all the argument in the world won’t allow you to win. The Judge has no choice but to allow the foreclosure if your admission, tacit or expressed, goes to all the elements required for a foreclosure.

For reasons that I do not understand the same lawyer that will summarily deny virtually all allegations in the complaint for anything other than a foreclosure action, will be very timid and uncertain about denying allegations and validity of the exhibits in a foreclosure. If you attack the foreclosure after admitting that the elements are there based upon UCC or other arguments attacking the documentary trail, you will most likely lose — unless you accidentally stumble upon an argument that deals with the money trail.

That is why I am continually pushing lawyers and pro se litigants to get advice from lawyers that allows them to deny the validity of the allegations of a judicial foreclosure and deny the validity and authenticity of the substitution of trustee, notice of default and notice of sale in the non-judicial states.

Say as little as possible. The more you allege, the more the burden is on you to prove things that only the other side has in the way of information. I have previously posted an article about that.

The judicial doctrine applies that where the information is exclusively in the care, custody and control of the the opposing side then the mere allegation from you will be sufficient to shift the burden of persuasion onto the forecloser — and their case generally will collapse.

Jacksonville Business Journal by Michael Clinton, Web Producer

In a strange twist of events, a St. Augustine woman has filed foreclosure on a local branch of Wells Fargo after a judge ruled she could keep her home.

The bank tried to foreclose on Rebecca Sharp’s home, but a judge ruled she could keep it and the bank owed her nearly $20,000 for attorney’s fees — eight months later, the bank still hasn’t paid, Action News Jax reports.

“Foreclosure cases are based on borrowers not paying bills. Now, Wells Fargo has not paid its bills. There’s an irony there,” Sharp’s attorney Tom Pycraft told Action News.

Read the full story and see the video at Action News Jax.

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is the third-largest bank in Northeast Florida, with $5.5 billion in area deposits and a market share of 12 percent.

Alabama Appeals Court Slams U.S. Bank Down on “Magic” Fabricated Allonge

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NY Trust Law — PSA Violation is FATAL

RE: Congress (yes that is really her name) versus U.S. Bank 2100934

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

Editor’s Comment:

Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism has it right in the article below and you should not only read it but study it. The following are my comments in addition to the well written analysis on Naked Capitalism.

  1. Alabama is a very conservative state that has consistently disregarded issues regarding the rules of evidence and civil procedure until this decision from the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals was handed down on June 8, 2012. Happy Birthday, Brother! This court has finally recognized (a) that documents are fabricated shortly before hearings and (b) that it matters. They even understand WHY it matters.
  2. Judges talk to teach other both directly and indirectly. Sometimes it almost amounts to ex parte contact because they are actually discussing the merits of certain arguments as it would effect cases that are currently pending in front of them. I know of reports where Judges have stated in open Court in Arizona that they have spoken with other Judges and DECIDED that they are not going to give relief to deadbeat borrowers. So this decision in favor of the borrower, where a fabricated “Allonge” was used only a couple of days before the hearing is indicative that they are starting to change their thinking and that the deadbeats might just be the pretender lenders.
  3. But they missed the fact that an allonge is not an instrument that transfers anything. It is not a bill of sale, assignment or anything else like that. It is and always has been something added to a previously drafted instrument that adds, subtracts or changes terms. See my previous article last week on Allonges, Assignments and Endorsements.
  4. What they DID get is that under New York law, the manager or trustee of a so-called REMIC, SPV or “Trust” cannot do anything contrary to the instrument that appointed the manager or trustee to that position. This is of enormous importance. We have been saying on these pages and in my books that it is not possible for the trustee or manager of the “pool” to accept a loan into the pool if it violates the terms expressly stated in the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. If the cut-off date was three years ago then it can’t be accepted. If the loan is in default already then it cannot be accepted. So not only is this allonge being rejected, but any actual attempt to assign the instrument into the “pool” is also rejected.
  5. What that means is that like any contract there are three basic elements — offer, consideration and acceptance. The offer is clear enough, even if it is from a party who doesn’t own the loan. The consideration is at best muddy because there are no records to show that the REMIC or the parties to the REMIC (investors) ever funded the loan through the REMIC. And the acceptance is absolutely fatal because no investor would agree or did agree to accept loans that were already in default.
  6. The other thing I agree with and would expand is the whole notion of the burden of proof. In this case we are still dealing with a burden of proof on the homeowner instead of the pretender lender. But the door is open now to start talking about the burden of proof. Here, the Court simply stated that the burden of proof imposed by the trial judge should have been by a preponderance (over 50%) of the evidence instead of clear and convincing (somewhere around 80%) of the evidence. So if it is more likely than not that the instrument was fabricated, the document will NOT be accepted into evidence. The next thing to work on is putting the burden of proof on the party seeking affirmative relief — i.e., the one seeking to take the home through foreclosure. If you align the parties properly, all of the other procedural problems disappear. That will leave questions regarding admissible evidence (another time).
  7. Keep in mind that this decision will have rumbling effects throughout Alabama and other states but it is only persuasive, not authoritative. So the fact that this appellate court made this decision does not mean you win in your case in Arizona.
  8. But it can be used to say “Judge, I know how the bench views these defenses and claims. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the party seeking to foreclose is now and always was a pretender. And further, it is equally apparent that they are submitting fabricated and forged documents. 
  9. ‘More importantly, they are trying to get you to participate in a fraudulent scheme they pursued against the investors who advanced money without any proper documentation. This Alabama Appellate Court understands, now that they have read the Pooling and Servicing Agreement, that it simply is not possible for the investors to be forced into accepting a defaulted loan long after the cut-off date established in the PSA.
  10. ‘If you rule for the pretender creditor here you are doing two things: (1) you are providing these pretenders with the argument that there is a judicial ruling requiring the innocent investors to take the defaulted loan and suffer the losses when they never had any interest in the loan before and (2) you are allowing and encouraging a party who is not a creditor and never was a creditor to submit a credit bid at auction in lieu of cash thus stealing the property from both the homeowner and in violation of their agency or duty to the investors.
  11. ‘This Court and hundreds of others across the country are reading these documents now. And what they are finding is that pension funds and other regulated managed funds were tricked into buying non-existent assets through a bogus mortgage bond. The offer and promise made to these investors, upon whom millions of pensioners depend to make ends meet, was that these were industry standard loans in good standing. None of that was true and it certainly isn’t true now. Yet they want you to rule that you can force investors from another state or country to accept these loans even though they are either worthless or worth substantially less than the amount represented at the time of the transaction where the investment banker took the money from the investor and put it into a giant escrow fund without regard to the REMIC’s existence.

We don’t deny the existence of an obligation, but we do deny that this trickster should be given the proceeds of ill-gotten gains. The actual creditors should be given an opportunity to reject non-conforming loans that are submitted after the cut-off date and are therefore indispensable parties to this transaction.”

Alabama Appeals Court Reverses Decision on Chain of TitleCase, Ruling Hinges on Question of Bogus Allonges

In a unanimous decision, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reversed a lower court decision on a foreclosure case, U.S. Bank v. Congress and remanded the case to trial court.

We’d flagged this case as important because to our knowledge, it was the first to argue what we call the New York trust theory, namely, that the election to use New York law in the overwhelming majority of mortgage securitizations meant that the parties to the securitization could operate only as stipulated in the pooling and servicing agreement that created that particular deal. Over 100 years of precedents in New York have produced well settled case law that deems actions outside what the trustee is specifically authorized to do as “void acts” having no legal force. The rigidity of New York trust has serious implications for mortgage securitizations. The PSAs required that the notes (the borrower IOUs) be transferred to the trust in a very specific fashion (endorsed with wet ink signatures through a particular set of parties) before a cut-off date, which typically was no later than 90 days after the trust closing. The problem is, as we’ve described in numerous posts, that there appears to have been massive disregard in the securitization for complying with the contractual requirements that they established and appear to have complied with, at least in the early years of the securitization industry. It’s difficult to know when the breakdown occurred, but it appears that well before 2004-2005, many subprime originators quit bothering with the nerdy task of endorsing notes and completing assignments as the PSAs required; they seemed to take the position they could do that right before foreclosure. Indeed, that’s kosher if the note has not been securitized, but as indicated above, it is a no-go with a New York trust. There is no legal way to remedy the problem after the fact.

The solution in the Congress case appears to have been a practice that has since become troublingly become common: a fabricated allonge. An allonge is an attachment to a note that is so firmly affixed that it can’t travel separately. The fact that a note was submitted to the court in the Congress case and an allonge that fixed all the problems appeared magically, on the eve of trial, looked highly sus. The allonge also contained signatures that looked less than legitimate: they were digitized (remember, signatures as supposed to be wet ink) and some were shrunk to fit signature lines. These issues were raised at trial by Congress’s attorneys, but the fact that the magic allonge appeared the Thursday evening before Memorial Day weekend 2011 when the trial was set for Tuesday morning meant, among other things, that defense counsel was put on the back foot (for instance, how do you find and engage a signature expert on such short notice? Answer, you can’t).

The case was ruled in favor of the US Bank, in a narrow and strained opinion (which was touted as significant by reliable securitization industry booster Paul Jackson). It argued that the case was an ejectment action (the final step to get the borrower out after the foreclosure was final) so that, per securitization expert, Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin,

..the question of ownership of the note was not an issue of standing, but an affirmative defense for which the homeowner had the burden of proof…Crazy or not, however, this meant that the homeowner wasn’t actually challenging the trust’s standing. From there it was a small step for the court to say that the homeowner couldn’t invoke the terms of the PSA because she wasn’t a party to it…..

The case has been remanded back to trial court, and the judges put the issue of the allonge front and center.

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60 Minutes: Where are the prosecutions — We Found the Cases, Why Can’t Prosecutors?

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EDITOR’S COMMENT: 60 minutes staff easily found the key witnesses for prosecution of criminal and civil cases against Countrywide and Citi. Why haven’t the prosecutions taken place? And even more interesting is why have these witnesses not been interviewed — like the executive Vice-president in charge of fraud detection at Countrywide that said right on the program that criminal fraud was “Systemic” and that she would name names if she was talking to a grand jury?

That said, remember that proving cases beyond a reasonable doubt includes, in cases like these, that the individual defendant is shown to have actual knowledge of the events. Corporations can be charged criminally as well, so that might be coming as well. If you are going after the King you need to make sure you kill him and not let him live another day. That requires patient painstaking persistent work that builds a case that must be virtually bullet proof as opposed to civil cases where you might only need to prove that it is more likely than not that the person is guilty. 

SO before we totally condemn law enforcement, stay tuned. The prosecutors must penetrate layers upon layers of “Plausible Deniability.”

But the criticism of the attempted “settlement” involving multiple states where the Banks are simply rewarded for their behavior and pay a token amount to satisfy the public relations agenda of the attorney general in each of those states, is still worthy of criticism. It is pure nonsense to even think that the paltry sums and terms proposed by those settlements will assist any State or the Country in resolving this on-going, never-ending crisis. If that is the best the AG can do, he or she doesn’t belong in office.

And there is some support for criticism of on-going investigations. By this point in the timeline of the Savings and Loan Scandal in the 1980’s, there were more than 800 people serving prison terms.

DISGUSTING-60 Minutes- How Wall Street Walks Away The Crimes That Bankrupted America
December 5th, 2011 | Author: Matthew D. Weidner, Esq.
http://mattweidnerlaw.com/blog/

The most amazing and disgusting thing about this country today is not how crippled and destroyed this entire nation is…the real issue is how disconnected and unconcerned all of America is.

WHY HAS NOT A SINGLE BANKING EXECUTIVE GONE TO JAIL?

Entire companies that were engaging in systemic fraud, but investigators have not even spoken with people who still know the specific details of the crimes.

Little people on the ground like myself and the other attorneys and consumers who have been fighting have been screaming this for years. Why is no one listening? Even today, after years……

When will Americans finally wake up? Watch these videos, they are truly disgusting….

60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57336046-10391709/behind-the-financial-crisis-a-fraud-investigator-talks/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.3%3Ftag%3Dfacebook

60 Minutes Part II
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390540n&tag=pop;videos

“Occupied Wall Street Journal” Starts Printing the Truth

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The movement now has a professionally produced newspaper worthy of readers who are hungry for the real news. The name, probably temporary, is the Occupy Wall Street Journal. In addition to live streaming video, daily newsworthy events as politicians try to tap into the energy of the movement before they get swallowed by it, they now have a bona fide newspaper.

But there is another story here that is interesting. News travels around the OWLS by story-telling. There is no public address system and the numbers are swelling beyond the point where even the loudest speakers could reach — especially when you consider the fact that Occupy Wall Street has spawned the same action in many major cities across the country — just as it has happened in Europe and the Middle East. Things are changing. But the communication is personal – one on one. When someone makes a speech in one part it is repeated by someone down the line for others to hear and so it goes in a personal voice chain until the last person in the most outer reaches of the crowd gets to hear what was said.

This is personal and it is important. And the protesters are not just homeowners trying to hang onto their homes. It is mostly people who have been angry as hell since the bailout because we never got any straight answers about why it was really necessary. The real reason, it turns out, is that the banks stole the money and wouldn’t give it back. But the government, taking its information from the banks (go to the maker of the crime, after all, they know the most and they wouldn’t lie would they?) was stirred into panic all too easily.

It wasn’t real panic. It was an excuse to give the banks and big business one more shot at the public trough, where taxpayers have had their hard-earned money sucked out of them, only to see it redistributed into the pockets of people who were already too rich by any standards and who were paying next to nothing in taxes. While one could conceivably offer some slack to Obama and his administration as not being economists and not having all the information they needed at the time, and maybe you could even make a similar argument for the Bush administration that initiated the bailout, it is different now. Everybody knows.

It is the current reality that protesters want addressed in addition to holding those who produced this mess accountable for every penny they received. This includes but is far from limited to the the money that was paid on account of “obligations” created when feckless homeowners signed mortgage papers that were in reality part of a larger scheme to issue bogus securities — mortgage bonds backed by nothing.

In a clever irony Wall Street ,managed to pull off this feat by not revealing to borrowers that their signature was part of a larger scheme in which Wall Street was making a LOT of money that was undisclosed, contrary to the requirements of existing law. Now, in foreclosure, they are successful at limiting the court’s inquiry to small piece of the total securitization scheme that includes only the part where the borrower signed mortgage papers.

This is why the burden has shifted unfairly to borrowers to explain the unexplainable to Judges. This is why borrowers need to got through the time and expense of mastering securitization and contract law, property law, and predatory and deceptive lending; and it is why they need the kind of title analysis and securitization analysis and forensic analysis offered through this blog and by hundreds of other services.

The COMBO is not fairly something that the borrower should be required to produce. In due process, it is up to the the party seeking affirmative relief (like a foreclosure sale) to allege the elements of a bona fide cause of action and then prove it. The only reason why millions of homes have been “foreclosed) most vulnerable to being set aside if the homeowner is so inclined) is that the Courts listened to the bankers instead of the real news and failed to follow the law of evidence, and the laws of civil procedure where the burden of proof is and should be squarely on the banker that seeks to own someone else’s home.

Right now it is still up to the borrowers to shoulder the burden of proof of an elaborate scheme they had no part in creating and no basis for understanding. The whole paradigm shifts when Banks are forced to plead and actually prove their case with competent evidence — the whole case, that is, including the money they received from investors and the money they received when they bet against the bonds and mortgages. And when the Banks are forced on a larger scale to account for the entire scheme, the taxpayers, homeowners and job-seekers and the rest of the people who depend upon them will get the relief they deserve. Everyone is entitled to know the truth about where the money is, where it came from and how it was allocated.

People are angry because they know they are broke and they know who did it to them. Median income has dropped more since the recession was declared “over” than it dropped during the recession. Any person on the street knows what the government is just now grudgingly admitting — we have an emergency on our hands, the recession was never “over” and the prospects for recovery are nonexistent unless and until we start telling the truth to each other and dealing with reality.

I can tell you when this crisis will be over. It will be done when we stop treating victims as perpetrators and stop treating perpetrators as “businessmen” who are merely successful at pursuing the American dream. If the American dream was alive we wouldn’t have the disparity of 1% of the country controlling virtually all the wealth, directly or indirectly while the other 99% are forced to stand idle, not working, even though they are trained or willing to be trained for the new jobs of the 21st century. It will be over when we stop calling theft “profits” and when we stop calling those who call for return of ill-gotten gains “redistribution of wealth” or “socialism.”

When a purse snatcher has the purse seized by law enforcement and returned to its rightful owner that is not redistribution of wealth. The purse wasn’t his to begin with. There was no wealth to distribute, just value returned to its owner.

October 9, 2011

A Protest’s Ink-Stained Fingers

By

At the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Zuccotti Park, you’ll find all of the essentials of a state-of-the-art protest: drum circles, cheeky and plaintive handwritten signs, and, next to a thrumming generator, a hub of social media activity, including live streaming of the proceedings.

But amid the accouterments of modern political action, you will also find, of all things, a broadsheet newspaper, The Occupied Wall Street Journal. It is not some tatty, hand-drawn piece of protest samizdat, but a professionally produced, four-color, four-page document of the demonstration, which began on Sept. 17.

“Get your newspaper, get your free Occupied Wall Street Journal!” shouted one barker. Getting something in the hands of your average New Yorker is a pretty tough sell, but The Occupied Wall Street Journal was eagerly received, even by the people who just came to gawk, in part because it answered the question of what all the hubbub was about.

Forgive an old newspaper hack a moment of sentimentality, but it is somehow reassuring that a newspaper still has traction in an environment preoccupied by social media. It makes sense when you think about it: newspapers convey a sense of place, of actually being there, that digital media can’t. When is the last time somebody handed you a Web site?

“The act of one person giving another person a newspaper is important,” said Arun Gupta, one of dozens of people who helped put together The Occupied Wall Street Journal. “We wanted to come up with something that was beautifully designed and well-written that gives a tangible form to what is under way.” A call for the financing of the pop-up, instant newspaper went out on Kickstarter.com at the end of last month. An ad hoc group set out to raise $12,000 and has now surpassed $75,000. The initial print run of 50,000 was augmented with an extra 20,000 copies as the money rolled in, with promotional assists from Michael Moore, Andy Bichlbaum of the performance artists the Yes Men, and others. Mr. Gupta edited the newspaper, along with Michael Levitin, a former Associated Press journalist, and Jed Brandt, a writer and activist, was the lead designer. Dozens of other people pitched in. A second issue hit the streets on Saturday, along with a Spanish edition of the first issue.

Mr. Gupta is a longtime newspaperman, having published The Indypendent, a free, left-leaning newspaper that circulates to 20,000 readers in print and online, primarily in New York, 16 times a year.

The Occupied Wall Street Journal is not the “official” newspaper of the protest because nothing is official in the world of Occupy Wall Street. Mr. Gupta said that consensus was the core principle governing the protest, but something more entrepreneurial was required to get an actual newspaper out.

Although the sentiment and some of the informational anarchy of the event is reflected in the newspaper, it is produced by experienced, if far from objective, journalists. (You can get a PDF of the newspaper at bit.ly/qi05ls.) “We didn’t think there would be much in the way of coverage of the event, so we thought it was important that there be a media outlet that reflected what was under way,” Mr. Gupta said. “A newspaper is tactile, engages all of the senses, and leads to more immersive reading than what people might do online.”

While some of the recipients of the paper clearly saw it as little more than a souvenir, an artifact that demonstrates that they were present, many others opened up the paper and were reading it when I visited on Thursday.

Katie Trainer, who came from Lebanon, Pa., asked for a newspaper and suddenly found herself drafted to circulate some copies.

“This provides people information about a historic event,” she said. “It is a professional document, not just a sign.”

Christopher Guerra, working an informational table at the protest, is a fan of the newspaper, and newspapers in general.

“A Web site will come and go, but this could be here 100 years from now if the mold doesn’t get to it,” he said, holding a copy. “People say that newspapers are dying, but there is something about its physical properties, the fact that when you hold it in your hands, you end up with ink on them, that serves as a reminder that this all is real.”

Handsome as it is, no one is going to mistake The Occupied Wall Street Journal for its namesake — “the name just seemed like a natural,” Mr. Gupta said. (A spokeswoman at The Wall Street Journal declined to comment on the appropriation of the newspaper’s name.)

In the lead piece, Mr. Gupta writes, “For over two weeks, in the great cathedral of capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.” Not the kind of sentence you will see Peggy Noonan writing anytime soon, though Mr. Gupta said an artist who had done a stipple drawing for the real Wall Street Journal, had also contributed an illustration for the back page.

But the newspaper is not just a broadsheet version of “Anarchist Basics” either. There is a well-designed timeline of recent protests dating to the Arab Spring and continuing through the demonstrations in Wisconsin and protests in Europe. The first issue also included a charming photo essay on protest signs and the people who carry them, along with a call to action from Chris Hedges, a former reporter for The New York Times.

The writing can be flowery and the rhetoric a bit crunchy, but a piece titled “Occupations for Dummies” offered a carefully constructed document about how the protest came together (the group AdBusters put out the word in July); the limits and power of a leaderless movement (“really hard, frustrating and slow”); and the lack of a central demand.

Print and protest are frequent fellow travelers. It’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of the Arab Spring, the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo also produced a newspaper called Liberation Square.

Jeremi Suri, a professor of history and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said that newspapers would continue to play a durable role in social movements.

“In a newspaper is an element of analysis that you don’t get in a sign or a pamphlet,” he said. “In both the ’20s and ’30s, and during the protests of the ’60s, underground newspapers played an important role in bringing people together to create something in common.”

The rest of us in the media have had trouble catching up with Occupy Wall Street, in part because it refuses to live in a pigeon hole. Like all nascent social movements involving myriad interest groups, there are inchoate, atavistic impulses at work. So, are they the anti-Tea Party, the old guard lefties in new clothing, or just disenfranchised Americans engaging in some new form of pushback?

Rather than a neat list of demands, the group tends to ask questions. Then again, who among us has not wondered if the capitalistic fundamentals of choices and consequences were suspended in order to bail out Wall Street banking firms?

The country is just coming to grips with an episode in which some financial institutions, through fecklessness and greed, all but tipped over the American economy, and the arrival of the occupiers in the financial district presents a complicated subject.

Media coverage has tended to focus on civil disobedience because that is where the action is. Much was made of the thrust and parry between the protesters and police, most recently on Wednesday night, in which an attempt by some protesters to march down Wall Street was met with pepper spray and 23 arrests.

That melee was at distant remove by Thursday in Zuccotti Park. There were people taking naps, and occasional chants sprung up, while some of the police officers and protesters talked along the periphery. One of the cops took a proffered copy of The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

“What’s the harm?” he said. He opened the broadsheet to its full dimensions, and added: “I’ll give them one thing. It’s a pretty good-looking paper.”

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter.com/carr2n

Administrative Action You Can Use: F.D.I.C. Sues WAMU (now Chase) Ex-Chief

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“They focused on short-term gains to increase their own compensation, with reckless disregard for WaMu’s long-term safety and soundness,” the agency said in the 63-page complaint. “The F.D.I.C. brings this complaint to hold these highly paid senior executives, who were chiefly responsible for WaMu’s higher-risk home lending program, accountable for the resulting losses.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: READ THE COMPLAINT. In my opinion it constitutes an administrative finding by the lead federal agency that lending practices were fatally defective. In my opinion this constitutes enough, through judicial notice, to shift the burden of proof onto the other side as to most of your defenses, affirmative defenses and counterclaims. In fact, if you look at ANY complaint filed by an administrative agency, I believe it can be used as prima facie finding of wrong-doing. To the extent that a complaint from an administrative agency states that it has performed an investigation and affirmatively alleges that a particular defendant did something wrong as specifically set forth in that complaint, it is my opinion that through judicial notice, this constitutes a final finding of fact by an official agency which MUST be taken as a prima facie case.

PRACTICE NOTE: It won’t carry the same weight as a written decision following an administrative hearing, but the same law can be applied and it will carry a lot of weight.

F.D.I.C. Sues Ex-Chief of Big Bank That Failed

By ERIC DASH

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sued the former chief executive of Washington Mutual and two of his top lieutenants, accusing them of reckless lending before the 2008 collapse of what was the nation’s largest savings bank.

The civil lawsuit, seeking to recover $900 million, is the first against a major bank chief executive by the regulator and follows escalating public pressure to hold bankers accountable for actions leading up to the financial crisis.

Kerry K. Killinger, Washington Mutual’s longtime chief executive, led the bank on a “lending spree” knowing that the housing market was in a bubble and failed to put in place the proper risk management systems and internal controls, according to a complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Seattle.

David C. Schneider, WaMu’s president of home lending, and Stephen J. Rotella, its chief operation officer, were also accused of negligence for their roles in developing and leading the bank’s aggressive growth strategy.

“They focused on short-term gains to increase their own compensation, with reckless disregard for WaMu’s long-term safety and soundness,” the agency said in the 63-page complaint. “The F.D.I.C. brings this complaint to hold these highly paid senior executives, who were chiefly responsible for WaMu’s higher-risk home lending program, accountable for the resulting losses.”

In addition, the complaint says that Mr. Killinger and his wife, Linda, set up two trusts in August 2008 to keep his homes in California and Washington out of the reach of the bank’s creditors. Months earlier, in the spring of 2008, Mr. Rotella and his wife, Esther, made similar arrangements. The F.D.I.C. is seeking to freeze the assets of both couples and named the wives as defendants in the lawsuit.

In unusually vigorous denials, Mr. Killinger and Mr. Rotella came out swinging against the F.D.I.C. Mr. Killinger said the agency’s claims were “baseless and unworthy of the government” and its legal conclusions were “political theater.” Mr. Rotella said the action “runs counter to the facts about my relatively short time at the company,” calling it “unfair and an abuse of power.” He said the trust was for normal estate planning purposes and was set up before the bank’s downfall. Mr. Schneider, who is represented by the same lawyer as Mr. Rotella, did not release a public statement.

Although the F.D.I.C. is mainly known for its role in shuttering failed lenders, the agency has a legal obligation to bring lawsuits against former directors and officers when it finds evidence of wrongdoing.

So far, the F.D.I.C. has brought claims against 158 individuals at about 20 small banks that failed during the recent crisis. The agency is seeking a total of more than $2.6 billion in damages. But the $900 million case against the former WaMu officials is its biggest and most prominent action to date.

Federal regulators have come under fire for failing to hold executives responsible for their involvement in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Last fall, the Securities and Exchange Commission reached a settlement with Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, to pay a $22.5 million penalty over misleading investors about the financial condition of the giant mortgage lender.

The New York attorney general’s office has brought a civil suit against Kenneth D. Lewis over improper disclosures related to the 2008 rescue of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, of which he was chief executive.

But several investigations into the actions of executives at the American International Group, Lehman Brothers and other financial firms have stalled — especially criminal cases, which have a much higher burden of proof.

The F.D.I.C., meanwhile, has been under intense pressure to recoup as much money as possible on behalf of Washington Mutual bondholders, who were outraged over its sale in September 2008. Critics said the agency moved too quickly to seize the troubled bank, and then allowed JPMorgan Chase to snap up its assets and branches for a mere $1.8 billion. Ever since, they have unleashed a wave of litigation and asked lawmakers to hold hearings about the controversial rescue.

In his statement, Mr. Rotella suggested the lawsuit was a way for the F.D.I.C. to extract a windfall from directors’ and officers’ insurers, which would want to settle any claims.

The F.D.I.C. complaint says that Mr. Killinger and his top lieutenants took “extreme and historically unprecedented risks” as the savings bank plunged headlong into risky mortgage lending near the height of the housing boom. As experienced bankers, they should have tempered this growth strategy and improved risk management systems to reduce potential losses if the real estate market fell, according to the complaint.

Instead, according to the complaint, they ignored the warnings of the bank’s risk managers and sank deeper into the risky subprime lending and hot real estate markets, like Florida and California. Indeed, the complaint lists more than 26 areas in which they acted recklessly, including a failure to put adequate limits on the concentration of mortgages and employee compensation programs that encouraged high loan volume at the expense of loan quality. The complaint quotes Washington Mutual’s own chief risk officer as telling Mr. Killinger, just weeks before it was seized, that the “risk chromosome” was missing from the bank’s DNA.

In lengthy statements, Mr. Killinger and Mr. Rotella disputed the basic thrust of the F.D.I.C.’s case and reiterated their belief that Washington Mutual was prematurely and unfairly seized. They also insisted that they behaved prudently, acted with constant oversight of banking regulators and took strong action to shore up the bank’s finances when market conditions worsened in late 2007 and early 2008.

“Those initiatives — once applauded by the regulators as diligent and responsible management — have, through the alchemy of Washington, D.C., politics been turned into allegations of gross negligence,” Mr. Killinger said in a statement.

USING RESCISSION AS A PROCEDURAL TOOL

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The most persistent problem facing homeowners today is that in any challenge to the apparent “lender” there are presumptions that arise in the mind of the court in favor of the supposed creditor and against the homeowner. Using rescission as a procedural tool, along with the current news cycle, is changing that to force pretender lenders to establish their credentials and the validity of the original loan, as well as the non-existent transfer documents upon which the pretender lender relies upon to pursue ownership of the home.

In the old days before the market was flooded with money, before the lending risk was removed from the originating lender, before the creation of privatized recording systems and before the use of robo-signing on robo-approved mortgages, if a creditor came into court with the word “Bank” in its name, it was presumed that it was the lender, that the mortgage was valid and that any “technical problems” could be easily fixed.

The homeowner was invariably seen as someone in distress who was merely seeking to delay the inevitable. While the fact that they had fallen on hard times was regrettable, they had nonetheless taken a loan of money that had to be repaid to the lender who was now in court seeking repayment or the right to sell the collateral — i.e., the home. In many cases the homeowner was viewed as an annoying deadbeat who was trying to skip out on a perfectly legal obligation. The outcome was not in doubt. It was only about time.

In nearly all judicial foreclosure cases, the borrower did not bother to answer or defend, and so a default was entered by the clerk of the court. Based upon that default, the lender would then apply to the Judge for a Default Judgment to be entered, including reasonable costs and fees, and that a sale date be be set for the home. The number of homeowners contesting the mortgages or the foreclosures was infinitesimal. Foreclosure in judicial forums had become a clerical function except in rare cases.

So many states, at the request of the banks, enacted non-judicial sale statutes in which the the presumption was that if there was a judicial foreclosure it would be a waste of time and money. They gave a window of opportunity to borrowers to contest the sale but it was not clear how it worked. In any case, if the borrower did object to the sale, the burden was suddenly on the borrower to go to court instead of the bank. And being the party who brought the case to court, the Judge naturally looked to the borrower to plead and prove a case.

In truth, nobody ever thought it through because it wasn’t necessary to think it through. The non-judicial states all have statutes for judicial foreclosures of residential property but they are rarely used. The non-judicial states should simply have said that if a borrower objects tot he sale, then the bank must bring the action judicially and prove its case. The requirements of due process would be met, and the burden of proof would be on the party seeking affirmative relief (the party seeking to sell the homeowner’s home).

Instead, the practice evolved that the borrower had to bring a lawsuit which brought the question to what to plead? The homeowner wasn’t seeking affirmative relief and had no case other than the FACT that the borrower objected to the sale. In practice, the homeowner was required to file a lawsuit essentially alleging that that the pretender lender had no case — which amongst lawyers is known as a motion to dismiss. The borrower couldn’t file it as a motion to dismiss because there was no lawsuit by the pretender lender.

The ensuing confusion in the Federal and State civil courts and the bankruptcy courts led to a multiplicity of decisions each conflicting with each other. Invoking “rescission” under TILA might be the answer to correcting the errors in procedure that are pandemic in the system now.

Under TILA and Reg Z, (unless changed and effective retroactively) the mere statement of an intention to rescind requires the “lender” to either give up or file a lawsuit seeking declaratory relief. By aggressively using rescission as a procedural tool, the borrower/homeowner should be able to force any non-judicial sale into a judicial forum in which the “lender” must establish essential facts concerning jurisdiction, and a short plain statement of the facts upon which relief should be granted, including copies attached to the pleading and the original documents available for inspection.

In other words, rescission, besides having the obvious teeth of removing the encumbrance from the property by operation of law, is an obvious vehicle for clearing the procedural path for a Judge to sort out the orientation of the parties and the burden of proof. Orienting the parties is simple — figuring out who is seeking affirmative relief (selling the house) and thus who has the burden of pleading and proving a case.

The intense resistance to procedural due process in court and lobbying efforts of the banks to avoid the burden of proof leads one to at least question whether they could EVER successfully plead and prove a case against a homeowner. Their strategies of finessing the system with fabricated, forged and perjured evidence testifies to the presumption that the original mortgages might not be valid and they know it. It also testifies that their claim to have securitized the mortgages was a lie and they know that too.

In the final analysis, the money came from sales of securities to investors. The pretender lenders are doing everything they can to prevent those investors and the homeowners from getting together or even knowing the identity of each other. The identification of an actual creditor on the obligation and the finding that the obligation is actually secured by a mortgage might be impossible.

While that might be counter-intuitive, as Renaldo Reyes of Deutsch likes to say, it is nevertheless true, as he also like to say. And if it is true, it certainly is through no fault of the borrower or the investor both of whom were duped with false appraisals of what they were getting. And if it was false, then why have not the banks simply come forward with reams of evidence showing exactly that? A barrage of real evidence would return us to the good old days when we knew what constituted a note, mortgage and obligation and who could enforce it.

It is the growing opinion of judges, legislators, administrators of agencies, and homeowners that the unwillingness of the megabanks to comply with simple requests for real evidence stems from  an incapacity to present it because it does not exist. The fact that this is inconvenient to the banks who screwed up the title records in the first place is not a reason to avoid a solution.

The solution, as I have said before, is that the chips need to fall on the table and in some manner, a formal or informal mortgage guarantee and resolution authority must process the renegotiation of tens of millions of mortgage deeds converting them from wild deeds littering the title records to honest to goodness real mortgages, real notes and real obligations. Some foreclosures will still occur, but only a tiny fraction of what has been done and what is planned.

Writ of Mandamus: The Right Procedure

submitted by Frank D’Anna

Writ of Mandate 2 Frank D’Anna

COMMENT: I don’t know if Frank got help, but however he did it, this is a fine piece of work. He obviously understands that if you want to take an appeal, you must state a reason that the trial court erred. If you want to win it, you better come up with a procedural issue that is compelling. Most appeals fail. The reason is that the Appellant wants the appellate court to say the Judge was wrong on the facts. They don’t do that except in the rarest of cases, so don’t bother.

The best appeal is to be able to say and show IN THE COURT RECORD that you didn’t get your day in court, which is to say that the trial judge refused to hear your case on the merits. Any other appeal will get “Per Curium, Affirmed” without comment.

The second best appeal is to imply that the trial judge was tone deaf and ruled based upon presumptions he wasn’t allowed to make. D’Anna’s appeal is a combination of the the two approaches. They both amount to the same thing: you were not heard on the merits and the trial judge prejudged the case based upon incorrect presumptions.

Speaking in legalese this means that the trial judge presumed that YOU had the burden of proof and allowed your opposition, over your objection, to introduce information that was not authenticated, verified or given proper foundation to be taken into evidence. In many cases there is no evidentiary hearing. Your case is a denial of the allegations of the oppositions whether they have filed (judicial states) or they haven’t filed them (Non-judicial states).

The mistake repeatedly made in the trial court is acceptance by the borrower that the borrower has some burden of proof regarding the standing of the opposing party, whether the opposing party is a real party in interest, and whether the note was properly assigned or ever made it into the “Trust.”

This is just plain wrong: There is only party actually seeking affirmative relief — the one who wants to enforce the note and foreclose on the property. The party seeking affirmative relief is the ALWAYS charged with pleading a case upon which relief could be granted and ALWAYS required to prove each and every allegation. The allegations and the proof must line up with the elements of their cause of action as stated by statute, the rules of civil procedure and previous common law decisions.

In non-judicial states these errors are magnified. Because the law is universally misapplied, a party can foreclose through power of sale even if they would have no right to foreclose judicially. That is not the law and if it was the law it would be unconstitutional.

  • The fact that the forecloser ignores the basic elements of law does not shift the burden of pleading or the burden of proof onto the borrower.
  • The fact that the borrower/debtor must bring an action seeking injunction or restraining order to stop the non-judicial sale does not change the burden of pleading or the burden of proof.
  • Once the denial or objection is registered in any fashion, the Trustee in a non-judicial state and the mortgagee in a judicial state MUST, under all conditions, plead and prove their case in a court of law.
  • Non-judicial election is simply not available.

BUT HERE’S THE RUB: IF YOU DON’T OBJECT TO WHAT THE COURT IS DOING, YOUR OPPOSITION IS GOING TO ARGUE, MANY TIMES SUCCESSFULLY THAT YOU WAIVED THAT ARGUMENT. BUT JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES CAN BE HEARD AT ANY TIME EVEN IF THEY ARE FIRST BROUGHT UP ON APPEAL.

Re-Orienting the Parties to Clarify Who is the Real Plaintiff

The procedural motion missed by most lawyers is re-orienting the parties. Just because you are initially the plaintiff doesn’t mean you should stay that way. Once it is determined that the party seeking affirmative relief is seeking to sell your personal residence and that all you are doing is defending, they must become the plaintiff and file a lawsuit against you which you have an opportunity to defend. A Judge who refuses to see that procedural point is in my opinion committing clear reversible error.

If the would-be forecloser could not establish standing and/or could not prove their case in a judicial foreclosure action, there is no doubt in my mind that the ELECTION to use the power of sale is UNAVAILABLE to them. They must show the court that they have a prima face case and the homeowners must present a defense. But that can only be done if the parties are allowed to conduct discovery. Otherwise the proceedings are a sham, and the Judge is committing error by giving the would-be forecloser the benefit of the doubt (which means that the Judge is creating an improper presumption at law).

If the Judge says otherwise, then he/she is putting the burden on the homeowner. But the result is the same. Any contest by the would-be forecloser should be considered under the same rules as a motion to dismiss, which means that all allegations made by the homeowner are taken as true for purposes of the preliminary motions.

Some people have experienced the victory of a default final judgment for quiet title only to have it reversed on some technical grounds. While this certainly isn’t the best case scenario, don’t let the fight go out of you and don’t let your lawyer talk you into accepting defeat. Reversal of the default doesn’t mean anyone won or lost. It just means that instead of getting the ultimate victory by default, you are going to fight for it. The cards are even more stacked in your favor with the court decisions reported over the last 6 months and especially over the last two weeks. See recent blog entries and articles.

All that has happened is that instead of a default you will fight the fight. People don’t think you can get the house for free. Their thinking is based upon the fact that there IS an obligation that WAS created.

The question now is whether the Judge will act properly and require THEM to have the burden of proof to plead and prove a case in foreclosure. THEY are the party seeking affirmative relief so they should have the burden of pleading and proving a case. Your case is a simple denial of default, denial of their right to foreclose and a counterclaim with several counts for damages and of course a count for Quiet Title. As a guideline I offer the following which your lawyer can use as he/she sees fit.

The fact that you brought the claim doesn’t mean you have to plead and prove their case. Your case is simple: they did a fraudulent and wrongful foreclosure because you told them you denied the claim and their right to pursue it. That means they should have proceeded judicially which of course they don’t want to do because they can’t make allegations they know are not true (the note is NOT payable to them, the recorded documentation prior to sale doesn’t show them as the creditor etc.).

I don’t remember if MERS was involved in your deal but if it was the law is getting pretty well settled that MERS possesses nothing, is just a straw man for an undisclosed creditor (table funded predatory loan under TILA) and therefore can neither assign nor make any claim against the obligation, note or mortgage.

Things are getting much better. Follow the blog — in the last two weeks alone there have been decisions, some from appellate courts, that run in your favor. There is even one from California. So if they want to plead a case now in foreclosure they must first show that they actually contacted you and tried to work it out. Your answer is the same as before. I assume you sent a qualified written request. Under the NC appellate decision it is pretty obvious that you do have a right of action for enforcement of RESPA. They can’t just say ANYONE contacted you they must show the creditor contacted you directly or through an authorized representative which means they must produce ALL the documentation showing the transfers of the note, the PSA the assignment and assumption agreement etc.

They can’t produce an assignment dated after the cutoff date in the PSA. They can’t produce an assignment for a non-performing loan. Both are barred by the PSA. So there may have been an OFFER of assignment  but there was no authority to accept it and no reasonable person would do so knowing the loan was already in default. And they must show that the loan either was or was not replaced by cash or a substitute loan in the pool, with your loan reverting back to the original assignor. Your loan probably is vested in the original assignor who was the loan aggregator. If it’s in the pool it is owned by the investors, collectively. There is no trust nor any assets in the trust since the ownership of the loans were actually conveyed when the investors bought the mortgage backed securities. They don’t want you going near the investors because when you compare notes, the investors are going to realize that the investment banker did not invest all the money that the investor gave the investment banker — they kept about a third of it for themselves which is ANOTHER undisclosed yield spread premium entitling you to damages, interest and probably treble damages.

The point of all this is that it is an undeniable duty for you to receive disclosure of the identity of the creditor, proof thereof, and a full accounting for all receipts and disbursements by the creditor and not just by the servicer who does not track third party payments through insurance, credit default swaps and other credit enhancements. It’s in federal and state statutes, federal regulations, state regulations and common law.

The question is not just what YOU paid but what ANYONE paid on your account. And even if those payments were fraudulently received and kept by the investment banker and even if the loan never made it through proper assignment, indorsement, and delivery, those payments still should have been allocated to your account, according to your note first to any past due payments (i.e., no default automatically, then to fees and then to the borrower). That is a simple breach of contract action under the terms of the note.

Again they don’t want to let you near those issues in discovery or otherwise because the fraud of the intermediaries would be instantly exposed. So while you have no automatic right to getting your house free and clear, that is often the result because they would rather lose the case than let you have the information required to prove or disprove their case in foreclosure. The bottom line is that you don’t want to let them or have the judge let them (Take an immediate interlocutory appeal if necessary) use the power of sale which is already frowned upon by the courts and use it as an end run around the requirements of due process, to wit: if you think you have a claim you must plead and prove it and give the opposition an opportunity to defend.

The procedural motion missed by most lawyers is re-orienting the parties. Just because you are initially the plaintiff doesn’t mean you should stay that way. Once it is determined that the party seeking affirmative relief is seeking to sell your personal residence and that all you are doing is defending, they must become the plaintiff and file a lawsuit against you which you have an opportunity to defend. A Judge who refuses to see that procedural point is in my opinion committing clear reversible error.

The worst case scenario if everything is done PROPERLY is that you get the full accounting, you are not in default (unless there really were no third party payments which is extremely unlikely) and they must negotiate new terms based upon all the money that is owed back to you, which might just exceed the current principal due on the loan — especially once you get rid of the fabricated fees and costs they attach to the account (see Countrywide settlement with FTC on the blog).

Prima Facie Case and Burden of Proof

In Court, a prima facie case is, in plain English, the completion of a party’s burden of proof. That means if you are seeking AFFIRMATIVE relief from the Court, then you have the burden of proving your case. In order to prove your case you must present evidence. Your evidence must conform to the legal requirements or elements of your lawsuit. So for example if you want to prove a case for damages, you must prove a duty, breach of duty and damages related to the breach of that duty. If you want to prove a case for breach of contract, then you must prove up the contract, the breach of the contract and the damages from that breach. If you are seeking to have the court make the other party do something, like pay you damages, then you are seeking affirmative relief.

In judicial states, there is no issue of who has the burden of establishing a prima facie case. In non-judicial states the issue is muddled because the borrower is required to file a lawsuit even  though it is the “lender” or “creditor” who is seeking affirmative relief. For reasons expressed below, it is my opinion that the prima facie burden in ALL states lies with the the party presuming to be the “lender” or “creditor.” So in all situations in all courts, federal or state, bankruptcy or civil, the burden is on the party seeking to enforce the note or foreclose on the property because when all is said and done, the party actually seeking affirmative relief is the party seeking to recover money or property or both.

Legally, tactically and strategically, it is a mistake and perhaps malpractice to ignore this point because it is at the threshold of the courtroom that the case might be won or lost. If you ignore the point or lose the argument, you are stuck with going beyond the simple position of the homeowner — denial of the claim of the opposing party. Even the petition for temporary restraining order should be translated as the homeowner’s denial of the claim of of the “creditor” and a demand that the creditor prove up its claim.

In other words, once a homeowner denies the claim, the case automatically becomes judicial simply because the parties are in court. At that point the court must adjust the orientation of the parties such that the party claiming affirmative relief becomes the plaintiff and the homeowner becomes the defendant notwithstanding the initial pleading that brought them into court.

The essential legal question is first, what is the prima facie case, and who has the burden of proof? The party seeking affirmative relief is the party seeking to enforce the note and deed of trust (mortgage). That would be the beneficiary under the deed of trust and the party to whom the note is payable. The note is payable legally and equitably to the investors if the securitization of the note was successful. The beneficiary is also the investors, making the same presumption. The party seeking negative relief (i.e., seeking to avoid the enforcement) is the homeowner who may or may not be considered a “borrower” or “debtor” depending upon the outcome of a presentation of facts that include an accounting of ALL receipts and disbursements related to or allocable to the specific loan in question.

It is obvious that in plain language, the party initiating a non-judicial sale is seeking affirmative relief and that in cases where there is an adversary judicial proceeding, the homeowner wishes to deny the claim of the creditor. In non-judicial states where the sale is essentially a private sale NOT based upon judicial proceedings, the mistake made by judges and lawyers alike is that they become confused by the fact that homeowner brought the suit to stop the sale.

That homeowner lawsuit is actually in substance no more than a denial of the claim by the alleged beneficiary under the deed of trust. In practice, the error is compounded by making the homeowner prove a “case” based upon the homeowner’s denial. In effect, this practice presumes the existence of a prima facie case by the alleged creditor or beneficiary, which is a denial of due process. Due process means that first you make a claim, second you prove it and ONLY AFTER the claim and the proof does the opposing party have ANY obligation to offer ANY proof.

Further compounding this error in process, many such states have rules that prevent the homeowner from contesting an eviction (unlawful detainer, writ of possession) even though that is the FIRST TIME the case has been in court. In effect, the Court is making the presumption that legal process has been completed, and giving the Private Sale the status of a judicial order — and then inappropriately and without realizing it, applying the doctrine of res judicata or collateral estoppel in a case where there was no other proceeding, order, adversary hearing or any hearing on law or fact.

Therefore, in my opinion, the party who must establish a prima facie case is the party assuming the position of “creditor” or substitute lender, notwithstanding the apparent orientation of parties in the pleadings. Or, the prima facie case of the homeowner would consist of a denial that the opposing party is a creditor or that any money is due or that a default has occurred. Thus the burden would shift to the party actually seeking affirmative relief anyway. The prima facie case for the party seeking affirmative relief would require the following elements:

  • Establishment of the originating transaction
  • Establishment of chain of title as to homeowner
  • Establishment of chain of title as to obligation
  • Establishment of chain of title as to note
  • Establishment of chain of title as to deed of trust or mortgage
  • Establishment of chain of securitization documents
  • Establishment of acceptance of subject loan into each successive loan pool
  • Establishment of true party in interest and standing
  • Establishment of 1st party payments
  • Chain of 1st party payments step by step to the true party in interest
  • Chain of 3rd party payments step by step to the true party in interest
  • Establishment of allocation of 3rd party payments and receipts to subject loan
  • Accounting for all receipts and disbursements from all sources
  • Establishment of default date
  • Establishment of current status of the loan
  • Establishment of balance due
  • Establishment of encumbrance and status
  • Allocation of encumbrance to the property (if encumbrance covers future payments other than principal and interest — like taxes and insurance payable to 3rd parties, then the court must allocate a monetary value to the encumbrance for the benefit of the beneficiary)

The above elements would only be satisfied by the Court’s acceptance of testimony and documents with adequate foundation to be admitted into evidence. It would require actual persons with actual knowledge based upon personal observation, participation or experience with whatever aspect of the transaction is within the scope of their direct examination proffered by the party seeking affirmative relief. By virtue of the confusing panoply of documents, events and facts applicable to a securitized loan, it is my opinion that no legal presumptions would apply with respect to the obligation, note, encumbrance or default.

Hence, non-payment by the payor shown on the note would not give rise to the presumption of a default because of the explicit reference to third party payments, insurance and credit enhancements in the securitization documents. The party seeking affirmative relief would be required to proffer the testimony of a competent witness (probably someone from the investment banker that created the securitization chain and/or someone from the trading desk of the investment bank) that would provide a record and status of third party payments, receipts and disbursements allocable to the loan pool in which the subject loan was securitized. Failure to do so would lead to the conclusion of a failure of proof, or, in the court’s discretion, requiring the homeowner to cross examine each witness offered by the party seeking affirmative relief with the following question: “So you don’t know whether any third party made payments that would offset losses or principal in the loan pool, is that right?”

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