MASS SUPREME COURT CLARIFIES: YOU CAN'T SELL WHAT YOU DON'T OWN — MISSING HOMEOWNER WINS CASE WITHOUT KNOWING IT

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WRONGFUL FORECLOSURE IS NOT THE FOUNDATION FOR TITLE

PROSPECTS FOR TITLE PROBLEMS ACROSS THE NATION ARE MUSHROOMING

EDITOR’S NOTE: Likening the claims of the bank and the person who received a “quitclaim” deed to a Brooklyn Bridge transaction, the Court simply stated the most basic law: you can’t sell what you don’t own. But the reasoning of this Supreme Court decision, citing cases from long ago that are as valid to day as when they first decided, also goes directly to the issue of whether title can be challenged in an eviction arising from a foreclosure case.

The rule that a tenant cannot challenge the title of his landlord in an eviction case makes sense — if it is a landlord tenant case. But foreclosure cases are not landlord tenant cases. The fallacy of applying the rule to foreclosure cases is obvious and just as simple as the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision itself.

In a landlord-tenant case the allegation is that the defendant is a tenant under a lease and that they didn’t pay their rent under the lease terms. To allow title challenges that frankly are not really relevant would be to clog the courts with unnecessary litigation and stretch out the time a tenant  could stay without paying rent. Thus the rule that says you can’t raise defects in title in an eviction action between landlord and tenant. The allegation is made that by the Landlord that he is the Landlord, that the defendant is a tenant and that there is a lease, with the payment due of $x dollars per month  or per week and that the tenant did not pay — which has caused the landlord damage and therefore they need the possession of the property back so they can receive rent again to pay the mortgage, maintenance etc.

Foreclosure cases are much different. Here the allegation is that the Plaintiff is the owner, not a landlord as in the landlord-tenant case. Further, the allegation is that the occupant was the owner and isn’t anymore. The allegation MUST be that the change occurred as a result of a foreclosure that was duly prosecuted and in which there was a proper sale in which the Plaintiff obtained title and in which the rights to ownership and thus possession by the homeowner were foreclosed.

In civil procedure EVERYWHERE what is alleged is presumed to be true only in a motion to dismiss. If the allegations are denied, then there must be evidence from the plaintiff proving their allegations. In this case in Massachusetts as is the case in thousands of other instances, the evidence clearly shows that US bank was not the mortgagee when it initiated foreclosure.

Therefore US BANK could not foreclose. But it did anyway. And because they received a deed, they say that is enough. But a homeowner need only deny the allegations of the foreclosure and the sale and force the Plaintiff to prove it obtained real title in proper form and substance. Here is where US Bank fails and therefore the case was dismissed (in this case not an eviction, but a suit to quiet title against a homeowner who cannot be found).

If the allegation supporting the eviction action is faulty and cannot be proven, then the occupant wins. Those are the rules. If you make an allegation you must prove it with real evidence — not with presumptions that would allow people to sell the Brooklyn Bridge 100 times and make claims of presumption of title.

SEE 10.18.2011 Mass Sup Ct Bevi;aqua

Nemo Dat Trumps Bona Fide Purchaser

posted by Adam Levitin

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just handed down a second
major mortgage foreclosure ruling, Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez.  The case
was an Ibanez follow-up dealing with the rights of a purchaser at an
invalid foreclosure sale. I thought this was a no brainer case and
said so in an amicus brief co-authored with some of the Credit Slips
crew. As the trial court noted, the foreclosure sale purchaser has to
lose otherwise I could actually sell you the Brooklyn Bridge or some
other property I don’t own.

What was cool about this case from an academic perspective was that it
pitted two heavyweight, Latin-inscribed principles of commercial law
against each other:  the nemo dat quod non habet principle (you can’t
give what you don’t have) and the bona fide purchaser principle (one
who takes in good faith for value and without notice of defect will
get legal protection against claims). While these are both venerable
principles of commercial law, there should have been no question that
nemo dat prevails. It is arguably the foundational principle of
commercial law:  the most one party can transfer to another are the
rights it has.
We have one critical carve-out to that principle, the
holder-in-due-course doctrine, but the holder-in-due-course is much
like the bona fide purchaser:  it only applies if you take in good
faith and without notice of defect. And if you’re buying at a
non-judicial foreclosure sale, you’ve got notice of possible defect
(and one might argue about good faith). It’s a little like the problem
of finding a bargain when shopping–if it’s too good of a deal, it
could be a fraudulent transfer.

And so the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held.  If the
foreclosure was done improperly, the foreclosing party didn’t have
title to the property and thus couldn’t transfer title to the
purchaser. The court didn’t dismiss the suit with prejudice, so Mr.
Bevilacqua could get the property–if the foreclosure is done right in
the first place, but that means starting over again.

A lot of people think that the ruling in Bevilacqua will kill the REO
market. I doubt it. It might make it a bit harder to get title
insurance, but the title insurers have to keep issuing titles because
they need the cash flow. If there’s a widespread problem, they’re
already insolvent, so why not keep on doing business? There’s no tort
of deepening insolvency (at least in Delaware).

As with Ibanez, the Supreme Judicial Court merely upheld very sensible
principles that shouldn’t be controversial:  you need to be the
mortgagee to foreclose and you can’t sell what you can’t deliver.
What’s kind of astounding is that the banks have had the chutzpah to
challenge these basic principles of commercial law, as if centuries of
commercial law jurisprudence should suddenly bend to their
convenience. This is the same sort of arrogance that engendered the
creation of MERS and the Article 9 mortgage transfer process.

There’s a third case awaiting decision from the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court, Eaton v. Fannie Mae, which deals with the question of
whether a “naked mortgagee”–a mortgagee that isn’t the
noteholder–can foreclose. I filed an amicus arguing no way no how,
but we’ll see how the court rules.

Tags: assignment, bankruptcy, borrower, challenge title, civil procedure, countrywide, disclosure, Eviction, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, landlord-tenant, LOAN MODIFICATION, MERS, modification, quiet title, quitclaim deed, rescission, RESPA, securitization, TILA audit, title, title insurance, trustee, US BANK, WEISBAND
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