It’s been some time since I talked about Capacity, so I want to do a new post here on the subject. The bottom line is this, hundreds of thousands of foreclosure judgments are being entered based on complaints that lack one of the most basic elements of EVERY SINGLE OTHER LAWSUIT FILED IN THIS COUNTRY. The critical piece of information I’m speaking about is the identification of the parties to the lawsuit. Now in most cases, the borrower defendants are known and identified. They’re easy because the live in the home. The second lienholders are never properly identified and they are almost always only served through MERS, so it is questionable whether the real owner of the debt obligation secured by the second mortgage is notified, but that’s a subject for another blog.
Today I’m talking about the failure to specifically and accurately identify who or what the plaintiff corporation is, where they are located and under what authority they assert the capacity to sue. Now in this Twilight Zone world of mortgage foreclosures, our judges have no idea what the answers to those questions are so all across this state our judges are busy transferring millions of dollars in judgments and property to entities with long, confusing, abbreviated, obfuscated, mutilated, desecrated (whatever) names. Just last week a client came in with a JP Morgan as trustee for 123 trust in its capacity as receiver for XYZ bank, trustee or some such nonsense. Problem with that is no one could even pretend to know who or what was responsible for trying to throw a neighbor onto the street, but left unchallenged a judge somewhere will just grant that shadow entity a judgment.
Look carefully at the names that are listed on the attached documents that are registered with the Secretary of State. You think you recognize those names don’t you….Well Look Very Carefully at the owner’s name. Now I want to know what legitimate purpose a person would have for registering the names that are indicated there. I can certainly think of several improper reasons for having such names, but I cannot think of a single legitimate purpose. Look carefully at the names there people, then consider how that could come into play in our courtrooms across the state and in the current state of this mortgage environment.
