Charles Marshall Scores Major Victory in Cal. 4th DCA on Chase-WAMU Fraud

This was no easy task. And this is exactly the ruling that all the nay-sayers said could not happen. But it did.

https://livinglies.me/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/D075582_Opinion.pdf

D075582_Opinion.pdf

We reverse because her complaint alleges facts that could support a legal theory of recovery if she were given leave to amend.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

But Masoud’s final basis for her title claims—that WaMu sold her deed of trust to unknown third parties three years before Chase assumed its assets—cannot be so easily dismissed. In sustaining the demurrer, the trial court relied on the P&A agreement between Chase and the FDIC to conclude that Chase obtained the rights to Masoud’s deed of trust. But the legal meaning of the P&A is that Chase obtained whatever assets WaMu possessed as of September 2008. It does not exhaustively list what assets those were.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

Assuming (as we must at this stage) that the allegations of the operative complaint are true, it would mean that Chase was never WaMu’s successor in interest as to Masoud’s deed of trust and that at most, it attempted to transfer an asset it never owned to US Bank in 2011. As a result, according to Masoud, a party with no legitimate claim to her deed of trust foreclosed on her house.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

This is precisely the kind of injury envisioned in Yvanova, which held that a borrower has standing to challenge a foreclosure sale ordered by a party with no authority to do so. (Yvanova, supra, 62 Cal.4th at p. 943.) This court has further clarified that the protections of Yvanova apply only in the postforeclosure context—exactly the position Masoud now finds herself in. (Saterbak, supra, 245 Cal.App.4th at p. 815.) And on at least one occasion, this court has applied Yvanova in reversing a judgment of dismissal after a sustained demurrer when a borrower alleged her deed of trust was sold twice by the same party, rendering the second sale void and the foreclosure that followed unlawful. (Sciarratta v. U.S. Bank National Assn. (2016) 247 Cal.App.4th 552, 565.)

D075582_Opinion.pdf

other than the original 2005 deed of trust that references WaMu as the lender, the judicially noticeable documents are all from 2008 or later. They shed no light on whether WaMu, after funding the loan in 2005, assigned the beneficial interest to another party or other parties later that same year such that it had no interest to transfer in 2008.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

defendants appeared to argue that even if WaMu sold the beneficial interest in 2005 (so that there was no asset to transfer to Chase as part of the 2008 P&A agreement), it nonetheless retained rights as the servicer on the

loan.7 They suggest these servicing rights transferred to Chase in 2008 such that Chase was entitled to foreclose in its capacity as the loan servicer regardless of which entity held the beneficial interest.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

even if we could entertain the argument we would reject it. The complaint alleges that US Bank claims to hold the beneficial interest and the right to foreclose, which is fully consistent with defendants’ representations in their brief as well as the judicially noticeable documents in the record. The issue is not Chase’s role as the loan servicer, but the proper identification “of the party enforcing [the] debt.” (Yvanova, supra, 62 Cal.4th at p. 937.) Yvanova makes clear that “􏰀􏰁􏰂he borrower owes money not to the world at large but to a

particular person or institution, and only the person or institution entitled to payment may enforce the debt by foreclosing on the security.” (Id. at p. 938, italics added.) Here, Masoud has alleged that US Bank wrongly claimed to be the entity to which the deed of trust had been assigned. (Ibid. [borrower “is obligated to pay the debt . . . only to a person or entity that has actually been assigned the debt”].) At this point it remains a factual question as to which persons or entities held the beneficial interest in the deed of trust at the time of the foreclosure. That Chase may have inherited servicing rights or responsibilities from WaMu does not erase Masoud’s injury if a party with no beneficial interest in her loan directed foreclosure on her house.

D075582_Opinion.pdf

Liberality in permitting amendment of pleadings, even where there have been earlier opportunities, is required by this state’s well-established public policy favoring resolution of cases on their merits wherever possible. (See, e.g., Douglas v. Superior Court (1989) 215 Cal.App.3d 155, 158.)

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