ARE YOU A VICTIM OF WELLS FARGO'S PAIN?: Snohomish County Washington

Showing posts with label Snohomish County Washington. Show all posts

Friday, October 3, 2014

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE GEORGE BOWDEN VOIDED JACOB'S BRADBURN'S FORECLOSURE JUDGMENT!

Judge Overturns Bank of America Foreclosure

posted by ANSEL HERZ on WED, FEB 5, 2014 at 2:06 PM

ROB WILSON / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Here's some great news: Marysville's Jacob Bradburn, a 32-year-old crane operator, won a pre-trial summary judgement against Bank of America last week overturning his 2009 foreclosure. Snohomish County Superior Court judge George Bowden ruled that Bank of America's actions had been "unfair and deceptive" andvoided the foreclosure. Bowden writes:

I was troubled... that [Bradburn] was told that he should stop making his mortgage payments so that he could qualify for refinancing with Bank of America (BANA) and that once he fell behind he not only wasn’t approved for that refinance but then found himself unable to bring his mortgage loan current or resolve what he believed was a dispute about how much he was behind.

"They called me every day asking me if I wanted to refinance or get caught back up on the loans," Bradburn told me by phone today. "I’d say yeah, whatever it takes to save my house. And they would never tell me how to do it... I never qualified for loan modification." The scenario is reminiscent of Phyllis Walsh, a south Seattle woman who, according to her suicide note and family members, thought she was refinancing her mortgage with US Bank, but was actually being foreclosed upon. As I reported in October, Walsh killed herself two days before she was to be evicted from her home.

Citing ongoing litigation, a spokesman for Bank of America wouldn't comment on the ruling. And Bradburn's lawyer, Scott Stafne, cautioned against too much optimism, pointing out that the bank can still appeal. But he says it's "one of the first cases that I know of where a Superior Court has held a sale which took place four years ago to be void." It's also a strike against the widespread practice of having companies that have an incentive to foreclose act as the "trustee" on the home—in this case it was ReconTrust, which itself is a subsidiary of Bank of America. They're supposed to be neutral under state law; I'll have more on that in a future post.

If Goldman Sachs is a great vampire squid—apologies to Matt Taibbi—then Bank of America is a headcrab. The bank has a history of playing dirty tricks: its personnel boasted of spying on and trolling Anonymous activists, stalled homeowners it was supposed to help, as Bloomberg News reported, "with repeated requests for paperwork and incorrect income calculations," and "systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure," according to whistleblowers.

"I think Bank of America tries to abuse their power too much," says Bradburn. "Everybody bows down to them and all they get is a slap on the hand." But Bradburn didn't bow down, and he's hoping that means a settlement that enables him to buy another home.

ANOTHER HOMEOWNER WINS! THIS TIME AGAINST BANK OF AMERICA.

Foreclosed Homeowner Beats Big Bank;
Judge Voids Sale of Man’s Home

By Ronald L. Ray —

In the ongoing “war for plutocracy,” by which the Rothschild dynasty of financial pharaohs and the weasels of Wall Street seek to separate the common people from their property, the debt-slavers normally count on the dutiful support of the courts when turning distressed homeowners into America’s homeless. But Snohomish County, Washington Judge George N. Bowden showed both courage and character on January 30 when he voided the foreclosure sale of Jacob Bradburn’shome by giant Bank of America (BOA).

In a sense, Bradburn’s story is that of the American “Everyman.” Following the 2008 economic collapse, caused by avaricious Big Banks, Bradburn fell upon hard times. He turned to his mortgage servicer for help in keeping his home, only to hear the advice given by seemingly every servicer and credit card company.

Because he was still current on his mortgage, he was told he had to “miss a payment” before he could qualify for refinancing. Like so many other debtors before him, Bradburn did so, but the conundrum of bank-induced consequences was such a “convoluted case in the minefield of mortgage foreclosure litigation,” wrote Bowden, that even the legally trained judge’s mind struggled with the muddle of facts.

Immediately after the missed payment, the BOA snake constricted around its prey. Bradburn was denied refinancing. A dispute arose over how much money he continued to owe on the house—not uncommon in the quicksand of additional interest and penalties inflicted on delinquent homeowners, even when their delinquency was caused by a bank’s demand. And in the midst of Bradburn’s continuing efforts to seek assistance from the predatory lending institution, BOA foreclosed extrajudicially on his home and sold it out from under him. So much for helpful customer service.

But the BOA constrictor lives in a continent-wide jungle, designed to enrich the banksters through a complex secondary mortgage market where beneficiaries of promissory notes and mortgage instruments are ultimately unknown, and the actual holders of a mortgage change hands regularly. The name of this usurer’s paradise is Mortgage Electronic Registration System, Inc. (MERS), created by bankers for bankers.

Connecticut attorney Christopher G. Brown explains that MERS is like a private club for plutocratic poobahs—mortgage originators and secondary buyers and sellers—designed to prevent the “inconvenience” of paying government fees and taxes for registration each time a mortgage is sold. This eases a repeated change of creditors, enriching investors as much as 40 times over simply holding the mortgage. Often, transactions occur with deliberate anticipation of default and foreclosure. And, as in Bradburn’s case, MERS acts as a “placeholder” for the unknown actual creditors, preventing any equitable settlement of the mortgage debt prior to foreclosure.

Wading through the morass of names and contradictory claims by BOA, MERS and other financial entities involved, Judge Bowden concluded that the institutions violated both the strict requirements of the Deed of Trust Act and the Consumer Protection Act, prior to the home foreclosure sale. This included failing to appoint an independent trustee.

Most surprisingly, Bowden then granted partial summary judgment for Bradburn and his attorney, Scott Stafne, of the law firm, Stafne Trumbull, LLC. This means that, even assuming all the facts in favor of BOA, evidence pointed overwhelmingly towards the violation of Bradburn’s rights. Bowden voided the foreclosure sale of the Bradburn home and ruled that BOA, et al., were subject to “liability under the Consumer Protection Act,” due to “an unfair or deceptive practice, [which] occurred in a trade or commerce, and that those practices impacted the public interest.”

Bradburn can continue to sue the banksters, and, most importantly for now at least, he can keep his home.

Ronald L. Ray is a freelance author and an assistant editor of THE BARNES REVIEW. He is a descendant of several patriots of the American War for Independence.

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