By Prashant Gopal and Thom Weidlich – Feb 1, 2011 3:16 PM ET
A JPMorgan Chase & Co. branch in El Paso, Texas, may have furniture and computers seized by the sheriff unless the bank complies with a judge’s order to pay the legal bills of a single mother whose eviction case he dismissed.
The manager of the Chase branch was served on Jan. 26 with court papers that instructed the New York-based company to pay attorney Richard A. Roman’s $5,000 in fees, according to Detective Hector Lara, an El Paso County sheriff’s officer. The manager, Jose Gomez, told Lara that the branch’s gear is protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and that he would contact the bank’s security staff and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lara said today in a telephone interview.
Lara said he’s waiting for an opinion from the county attorney on whether the bank’s property can be seized.
“They don’t have a problem putting my client out in the street,” Roman said. “But when somebody prevails against a bank, they pull every string in the book to avoid paying.”
Massachusetts’s highest court is poised to rule on whether foreclosures in the state should be undone because securitization-industry practices violate real- estate law governing how mortgages may be transferred.
The fight between homeowners and banks before the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston turns on whether a mortgage can be transferred without naming the recipient, a common securitization practice. Also at issue is whether the right to a mortgage follows the promissory note it secures when the note is sold, as the industry argues.
A victory for the homeowners may invalidate some foreclosures and force loan originators to buy back mortgages wrongly transferred into loan pools. Such a ruling may also be cited in other state courts handling litigation related to the foreclosure crisis.
“This is the first time the securitization paradigm is squarely before a high court,” said Marie McDonnell, a mortgage-fraud analyst in Orleans, Massachusetts, who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of borrowers. The state court, under its practices, is likely to rule by next month.
Claims of wrongdoing by banks and loan servicers triggered a 50-state investigation last year into whether hundreds of thousands of foreclosures were properly documented as the housing market collapsed. The probe came after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. said they would stop repossessions in 23 states where courts supervise home seizures and Bank of America Corp. froze U.S. foreclosures. Massachusetts is one of 27 states where court supervision of foreclosures generally isn’t required.
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