Pretty amazing opinion in Culhane v Aurora Loan Services of Nebraska byJudge Young of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Judge Young breaks out a fresh can of whoop-ass on MERS, which wasn’t even a litigant. How are these choice lines: “MERS is the Wikipedia of Land Registration Systems.” Now I like Wikipedia, but property title isn’t do-it-yourself. Or this gem: “a MERS certifying officer is more akin to an Admiral in the Georgia navy or a Kentucky Colonel with benefits than he is to any genuine financial officer.” Well, at least he didn’t call them an “Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska”. You gotta love a landlocked navy.
That said, for all of his misgivings about MERS supplying “the thinnest possible veneer of formality and legality to the wholesale marketing of home mortgages to large institutional investors,” Judge Young still says that it’s kosher, if unseemly.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
ORATAI CULHANE,
Plaintiff,
v.
AURORA LOAN SERVICES OF NEBRASKA,
Defendant.
EXCERPT:
Nationwide, courts are grappling with challenges to MERS’s power to assign mortgages as well as its practice of deputizing employees of other companies to make assignments on its behalf. The present case is distinct only in that it is this Court’s first encounter with MERS and with the question whether its involvement in the origination and assignment of a mortgage loan clouds record title to the mortgaged property. The public has an interest in ensuring the liquidity of the mortgage market. Thus, even if Culhane is unable to exercise her equitable right of redemption and foreclosure of her mortgage loan is inevitable, title must pass free of cloud and not subject to challenge in any future action for summary process or to try title on the ground that the foreclosure process was conducted unlawfully. See Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez, 460 Mass. 762, 772 (2011); Bank of N.Y. v. Bailey, 460 Mass. 327, 333-34 (2011).
[…]
Indeed, a MERS certifying officer ismore akin to an Admiral in the Georgia navy or a Kentucky Colonelwith benefits than he is to any genuine financial officer. Inits rush to cash in on the sale of mortgage-backed securities,the MERS system supplies the thinnest possible veneer offormality and legality to the wholesale marketing of homemortgages to large institutional investors.14
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