Tag Archives: deutsche bank

Homeowner Can Challenge Mortgage Assignment

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Judge Kennelly has ruled that a homeowner can challenge a mortgage assignment under Illinois law in Elesh v. MERS et al., No. 12 C 10355 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 16, 2013). The Court stated that

Defendants argue that Elesh is not a party to the assignment and thus lacks standing to challenge it. Only one of the cases upon which defendants rely, however, is an Illinois case, and that case makes it clear that this supposed “rule” has exceptions. See Bank of America Nat’l Ass’n v. Bassman FBT, LLC, No. 2-11-0729, 2012 IL App (2d) 110729, 981 N.E.2d 1, 6-11 (2012). The basic requirements of standing are that the plaintiff suffered an injury to a legally cognizable interest and is asserting his own legal rights rather than those of a third party. See id. at 6. Elesh unquestionably meets the first requirement; the recorded assignment constitutes a cloud on his title, and Deutsche Bank recently relied on the assignment to prosecute a foreclosure action against him. Elesh also has a viable argument that in challenging the validity of the assignment, he is asserting his own rights and not someone else’s rights. For example, given Deutsche Bank’s apparent lack of possession of the original note, Elesh is put at risk of multiple liability as long as Deutsche Bank claims to hold the mortgage. See id. at 7-8 (citing cases indicating that an obligor has an interest in ensuring that he will not have to pay the same claim twice). In any event, Illinois law, to the extent there is much of it on this point, appears to recognize an obligor’s right to attack an assignment as void or invalid under certain circumstances. (3)

This is a pretty significant case, at least in Illinois, as it provides homeowners with a way to defend against a foreclosure action that does not rely upon whether the loan is in default or not. The Court takes seriously the possibility that the homeowner could otherwise be liable for the same debt twice.  Commentators and courts have downplayed that risk, so it is notable that this Court has taken this position. Time will tell if other courts do so as well.

 

 

 

 

[HT April Charney]

Oregon Court Rejects Plaintiff’s Argument That the Trust Deed Can Only be Foreclosed if a Single Entity Holds Both the Note and Deed

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After receiving a Notice of Default and Election to Sell, the plaintiff in Spencer v. Guaranty Bank et al., No. 10CV0515ST, Deschutes Co. Circuit (May 5, 2011) sought an injunction barring MERS, as well as the other defendants, from bringing a foreclosure action. The court granted the defendants’ Motion to Dismiss with prejudice.

In addition to the court granting the motion to dismiss, the court also noted that the plaintiff “made no claim that she was not in default nor that any requirement of ORS 86.735 were not satisfied,” the court held that MERS satisfied the statutory definition of “beneficiary” under ORS 86.705. Specifically, the court identified that it was “not persuaded that Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems couldn’t act in that capacity, even if it is not the holder of the note.”

Moreover, the court also rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the trust deed can only be foreclosed if a single person or entity holds both the note and deed, noting that ORS 86.770(2) protects the plaintiff from a lawsuit seeking enforcement of the note after the non-judicial sale. “The bottom line is that plaintiff sought to retain ownership, apparently forever, of a property for which she has not paid nor even alleges that she intends to pay for. She has not stated a claim.”

BofA No Worm Ouroboros

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The Worm Ouroboros of myth was a gigantic serpent that encircled the earth only to bite its own tail. Judge Sweet (SDNY) has ruled that Bank of America is no modern-day Ouroboros that is so enormous that it must sue itself. In BNP Paribas Mortgage Corporation et al. v. Bank of America, N..A., No. 1:09-CV-09783 (June 6, 2013), Judge Sweet granted Bank of America’s motion to dismiss in its entirety (although this did not do away with all of the plaintiffs’ claims).

The Court noted that Bank of America served “in several distinct but related capacities for” what was a type of warehouse credit facility for Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. subsidiary, Ocala. (8) In particular, BoA served “as Indenture Trustee, Collateral Agent, Depositary and Custodian” for the transaction. (8) You may remember that the chairman of TBW was sentenced to 30 years in jail for running a massive fraud, from which this case ultimately springs.

The Plaintiffs “allege that BoA had contractual duties as Collateral Agent (under the Security Agreement) and as Indenture Trustee (under the Base Indenture) to sue itself in its other capacities for breaches of the  Custodial and Depositary Agreements,  respectively, and that it breached those duties by failing to bring suit against itself for these alleged cIaims.” (15, citations omitted)

Relying on well-settled law, the Court held that the transaction documents did not require BoA to sue itself. While this case does not really cover new legal terrain, its logic brings to mind S&P’s motion to dismiss DoJ’s FIRREA case.  In that case, S&P argued that “the Complaint fails to allege that S&P possessed the requisite intent to defraud the investors in the CDOs at issue. It is more than ironic that two of the supposed ‘victims,’ Citibank and Bank of America—investors allegedly misled into buying securities by S&P’s fraudulent ratings—were the same huge financial institutions that were creating and selling the very CDOs at issue.” (3) The aftermath of the financial crisis laid much bare about the securitization process, but the utter incestuousness of it can still shock.

This is not to say that this complexity and self-dealing are per se bad. Just that it seems that the sophisticated business people who put the deals together did not think through at all what would happen if deals went south.  Will they during the next boom?  Probably not.

So what does that mean for regulators?

The Devil is in the Statute of Limitations

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NY Supreme Court Justice Kornreich (N.Y. County) issued an opinion ACE Securities Corp. v. DB Structured Products Inc., No. 650980/2012 (May 13, 2013) that diverges in approach from an earlier SDNY opinion as to whether the statute of limitations runs “from the execution of the contract.” (5) The case concerns allegations that an MBS securitizer made false representations about the loans that underlay the MBS.

Kornreich held that the statute of limitations begins to run when the MBS securitizer (a Deutsche Bank affiliate) “improperly rejected the Trustee’s repurchase demand” so long as the Trustee did not “wait an unreasonable time to make the demand.” (7) (On a side note, Kornreich also held that the plaintiff in such a case is not required “to set forth which of the specific loans are affected by false” representations in a breach of contract claim. (7))

This really opens up the statute of limitations under NY law. There has been a lot of speculation that the flood of lawsuits arising from the Subprime Boom would have to come to an end because the statute of limitations covering many of the claims was six years.  A variety of developments has extended the possibility of filing a suit.  There is FIRREA‘s ten year statute of limitations. There is NY’s Martin Act, with its lengthy statutes of limitation. And now there is this expansive reading of NY’s statute of limitations for breach of contract actions.

Although one might think that all of the good cases have been filed already, you never know. And with the ACE Securities Corp. case, we can see how a case can be filed more than six years after the contract was entered into, under certain circumstances.

 

REMIC Armageddon on the Horizon?

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Brad Borden and I have warned that an unanticipated tax consequence of the sloppy mortgage origination practices that characterized the boom is that MBS pools may fail to qualify as REMICs.  This would have massively negative tax consequences for MBS investors and should trigger lawsuits against the professionals who structured these transactions. Courts deciding upstream and downstream cases have not focused on this issue because it is typically not relevant to the dispute between the parties.

Seems that is changing. Bankruptcy Judge Isgur (S.D. Tex.) issued an opinion in In re: Saldivar, Case No. 11-1-0689 (June 5, 2013)) which found, for the purposes of a motion to dismiss, that “under New York law, assignment of the Saldivars’ Note after the start up day [of the REMIC] is void ab initio.  As such, none of the Saldivars’ claims” challenging the validity of the assignment of their mortgage to the REMIC trust  “will be dismissed for lack of standing.” (8)

If this case holds up on appeal, it will have a massive impact on many purported REMICs which had sloppy practices for transferring mortgages to the trusts. That is a big “if,” as the case relies upon Erobobo for its take on the relevant NY law. Erobobo, a NY trial court opinion, itself reached a controversial result and is hardly the last word on NY trust law. The Court also acknowledges that additional evidence may be proffered relating to a subsequent ratification of the conveyance of the mortgage, but for the purposes of a motion to dismiss, the homeowners have met their burden.

For those few REMIC geeks out there, it is worth quoting from the opinion at length (everyone else can stop reading now):

The Notice of Default indicates that the original creditor is Deutsche Bank, as Trustee for Long Beach Mortgage Loan Trust 2004-6. The Trust is a New York common law trust created through a Pooling and Servicing Agreement (the “PSA”). Under the PSA, loans were purportedly pooled into a trust and converted into mortgage-backed securities. The PSA provides a closing date for the Trust of October 25, 2004. As set forth below, this was the  date on which all assets were required to be deposited into the Trust. The PSA provides that New York law governs the acquisition of mortgage assets for the Trust.

The Trust was formed as a REMIC trust. Under the REMIC provisions of the Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) the closing date of the Trust is also the startup day for the Trust. The closing date/startup day is significant because all assets of the Trust were to be transferred to the Trust on or before the closing date to ensure that the Trust received its REMIC status. The IRC provides in pertinent part that:

“Except as provided in section 860G(d)(2), ‘if any  amount is contributed to a REMIC after the startup day, there is hereby imposed a tax for the taxable year of the REMIC in which the contribution is received equal to 100 percent of the amount of such contribution.”

26 U.S.C. § 860G(d)(1).

A trust’s ability to transact is restricted to the  actions authorized by its trust documents. The Saldivars allege that here, the Trust documents permit only one specific method of transfer to the Trust, set forth in § 2.01 of the PSA. Section 2.01 requires the Depositor to provide the Trustee with the original Mortgage Note, endorsed in blank or endorsed with the following: “Pay to the order of Deutsche Bank, as Trustee under the applicable agreement, without recourse.” All prior and intervening endorsements must show a complete chain of endorsement from the originator to the Trustee.

Under New York Estates Powers and Trusts Law § 7-2.1(c), property must be registered in the name of the trustee for a particular trust in order for transfer to the trustee to be effective. Trust property cannot be held with incomplete endorsements and assignments that do not indicate that the property is held in trust  by a trustee for a specific beneficiary trust.

The Saldivars allege that the Note was not transferred to the Trust until 2011, resulting in an invalid assignment of the Note to the Trust. The Saldivars allege that this defect means that Deutsche Bank and Chase are not valid Note Holders.

(2-4, footnotes and citations omitted) The Court agreed, at least while “accepting all well-pleaded facts as true.” (5)

(HT April Charney)

Motion to Dismay

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A recent Opinion and Order by Judge Forrest (SDNY) in IBEW Local 90 Pension Fund v. Deutsche Bank AG gives hints of some of the challenges facing plaintiffs in cases alleging misrepresentations and a scheme to defraud investors.

Like many other cases alleging misrepresentation (here, here and here for instance), this case has some juicy examples/.  They include the following:

  • Greg Lippmann, Deutsche Bank’s top gobal RMBS trader, described Deutsche Bank’s RMBS products as “crap” and shorted it to the tune of billions of dollars. (6)
  • Lippmann described the process of selling CDOs based on RMBS as a “ponzi scheme.” (7)
  • Lippmann described some Deutsche Bank CDOs as “generally horrible.” (8)

Because this Opinion and Order is considering a motion to dismiss, it treats the allegations as true for the purposes of the motion. But the opinion does not consider the back story here (not that it should). And the back story undercuts the plaintiff’s case quite a bit, such that it illustrates the markedly different standards that would apply if this case were to be decided on a motion for summary judgment or if it went to trial.

So what is the back story?  Well, Greg Lippmann is no faceless Wall Street operator. Rather, he is one the handful of Wall Street rebels who bet big against the conventional wisdom about subprime mortgages and was profiled by Michael Lewis in the Big Short.

So imagine how the defense will contextualize these alleged statements.  Lippmann has been well-documented to have been a lone wolf within Deutsche Bank.  In fact, Deutsche Bank was overall long on these products.  Deutsche Bank was acting responsibly by hedging its exposure across the whole bank, even if some desks and units were at odds with each other.

Bottom line:  this plaintiff will have a tough row to hoe as this case proceeds past the motion to dismiss phase.

 

A Bransten Trio Join Judicial Chorus on Misrepresentation

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Justice Bransten, a judge in the Commercial Division of the N.Y. S. Supreme (trial) Court, issued three similar decisions last week denying motions to dismiss lawsuits by Allstate over its purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars of MBS. The net result is that various Deutsche Bank, BoA’s Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley entities must continue to face allegations of fraud relating to those purchases.

In the Deutsche Bank case, the court rejected “the notion that defendants are immunized from liability because the Offering Materials generally disclosed that the representations were based on information provided by the originators.”  (22)

The court also found that “defendants can be held liable for promoting the securities based upon the high ratings from the credit rating agencies, if, as alleged, thy knew the ratings were based on false information provided to the agencies.” (22)  Finally, the court found that “Defendants’ occasional disclaimers cannot be invoked to excuse the wholesale abandonment of underwriting standards and practices.”  (24-25)

Justice Bransten joins a growing chorus of judges who reject the notion that vague disclosures can protect parties who engage in rampant misrepresentation.  One wonders how this body of law will impact the behavior of Wall Street firms during the next boom.