On April 23, 2012, the plaintiff in State of Ohio ex rel. David P. Joyce, Prosecuting Attorney of Geauga County Ohio v. MERSCORP, Inc., et al., N.D. Ohio Case No. 1:11-cv-02474, filed its motion seeking an order certifying the action as a class action, appointing Geauga County as class representative, and appointing plaintiff’s counsel, the New York law firm of Bernstein Liebhard LLP, as class counsel. The plaintiff argues that the case, which the plaintiff is attempting to bring on behalf of all 88 Ohio counties for relief relating to the allegedly unlawful failure of MERS and its member institutions to record millions of mortgages and mortgage assignments throughout Ohio, meets all requirements of Rule 23(a) and that certification is proper under any one of the 3 subsections of Rule 23(b). The plaintiff hopes to persuade the court that the MERS/member institution policy concerning recordation of mortgages and assignments is a “common scheme or course of conduct” that has given rise to claims “ideally suited for class certification.”
October 13, 2011: Bernstein Liebhard LLP, with David P. Joyce, Prosecuting Attorney for Geauga County, Ohio, announced today that a lawsuit has been filed in the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas by Plaintiff Geauga County, on behalf of itself and all other Ohio counties, (the “Class”) against MERSCORP, Inc., Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc. (“MERS”), and MERS’s members (collectively, “Defendants”).
In the class action complaint, Plaintiff Geauga County, on behalf of itself and all other Ohio counties, alleges violations of Ohio state law arising from Defendants’ failure to record intermediate mortgage assignments in, and pay the attendant county recording fees to, Ohio county recording offices. In failing to record, Defendants systematically broke chains of title throughout Ohio counties’ public land records by creating “gaps” due to missing mortgage assignments they failed to record, or by recording patently false and/or misleading mortgage assignments. Defendants’ purposeful failure to record has eviscerated the accuracy of Ohio counties’ public land records, rendering them unreliable and unverifiable — damage to public land records that may never be entirely remedied.
Ohio’s recording laws have been in place for nearly 200 years.
The case is captioned State of Ohio, ex rel. David P. Joyce Prosecuting Attorney of Geauga County, Ohio v. MERSCORP, Inc., et al., No. 11-M-001087. For more information, please contact either Stanley D. Bernstein at (212) 779-1414, bernstein@bernlieb.com or Christian Siebott at (212) 779-1414, siebott@bernlieb.com.
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