Unless you had rare antiquities, I doubt that you would get that much from a jury. You might end up getting much less than that and have to pay WF their legal fees from what you do get.
Wow, it’s a good thing we have someone who “knows a lawyer” on this thread…
You’re the one showing your ass here, dude. I get that you’re angry but we have to live in the real world. You know well that it’s more than I just know a lawyer.
Bullshit. Someone had to make a final decision on that foreclosure. Whoever it was needs to be playing hard to get in the jailhouse shower.
If by “some” you mean “nearly all”, then yes. The court can order the parties to mediate. It can’t force them to make an offer. It certainly can’t force them to make a reasonable offer.
You have the details of the California offer-of-compromise rule vaguely correct. A plaintiff which refuses an offer and does not obtain a judgment greater than the offer pays the defendant’s costs from the point the offer was made, not all of its costs.
Most states have some form of non-judicial foreclosure procedure for uncontested foreclosures. All states require a court order where the borrower contests the action.
If by “uphold”, you mean “allow to proceed”, then yes. Under certain circumstances, anyway. An appellate court will reduce an award on appeal if the evidence is not sufficient for the jury to conclude that the plaintiff suffered that much in damages; or if it violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment (“shocks the conscience”); or, if violates state law in some way (exceeds a statutory cap on damages, for example).
Gross negligence doesn’t mean “negligence that is gross”. It’s a term of art. It means a wilful failure to exercise reasonable care, as opposed to any other failure to exercise reasonable care (plain old negligence).
It’s a high bar to meet. There’d have to be some sort of showing that Wells Fargo knew its procedures were inadequate to prevent this sort of thing, and failed to correct them (with adequate notice, not the two days that elapsed between the two fuckups here).
There’s also a bigger problem, which is that the people that did the fucking up were apparently outside contractors. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that Wells Fargo gave them the wrong address. In order to impute their screwup to Wells Fargo, you’d have to rely on some sort of negligent hiring claim - which is also a higher bar. Much easier to just settle and move on.
[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Bullshit. Someone had to make a final decision on that foreclosure. Whoever it was needs to be playing hard to get in the jailhouse shower.
[/QUOTE]
The OP’s title is misleading. Wells Fargo didn’t foreclose on the wrong house; they foreclosed on the right house, but their cleanout people emptied the wrong house.
Hang on, you’re telling me you don’t think a good lawyer can prove that Well-Fargo knew that their procedures were inadequate re: the 2ND house-trashing?
It seems pretty obvious to me that the bank knew this sort of thing could happen, and had no procedure in place to keep a 2ND house-trashing from happening again, to the same people. NO procedure at all to prevent the 2ND incident seems, to me, like pretty good proof of inadequacy.
Something has to exist to be adequate, right? ROFL
[nitpick] Umm guys did anybody actually read the links given up thread, particularly the link given in post 3 by voltaire?
WF did not foreclose on the wrong house. They did the foreclosure on the right house ( which was nearby) they sent the cleaning crew to secure the wrong house.
Here is the link again. Wells Fargo Mistakenly Cleans Out Retired Couple's Home Twice - ABC News
[/nitpick]
That’s a good point, Rick. Hopefully everyone knows that by now.
I have pointed this out more than once.
Thanks for the corrections. I don’t think that I was that far off in left field though.
Just curious, from what we know so far, what would you estimate that this case is worth?
Just a centon – since when did Battlestar Galactica use parsecs?
Faruiza, when things quiet down for you, would you please please ***please ***start a “Ask the (former) trashout contractor” thread over in MPSIMS? The Q&A would be great, and too many Dopers will miss it if it’s buried in here.
My apologies for messing up the title of the OP.
I think it was in the episode Spock’s Brain.
Not having a procedure is not evidence of gross negligence. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Neither you nor I have any idea what policies and procedures WF had in place, so if it’s “obvious” it’s because you’re guessing.
At a minimum, the cash value of the contents of the home. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that adds up to, and how much of it the owners can actually document… but it’s probably not much. I’ll just say that al27052’s “multiple millions” valuation is a trifle ambitious.
Probably the only way to document the cash value of the home contents will be the estate appraisal from when they inherited it.
The real exposure is in punitive damages, which can be ten times the actual damages.
I thought you said punitive damages would be extremely difficult to get, because you’d have to prove gross negligence.
I mean, I doubt, cash value, the contents were worth more than $40K, and that’s probably a generous estimate.
Not likely to happen. Most foreclosures end up the the personal property left out on the curb, or if the city insists they will haul it to a dump. Taking care and packing all the personal property, moving it to a rented storage, would be phenomenally more expensive than that. Financially they would be better off just paying for the occasional “mistake”.
That is, unless some legislation or regulation skyrockets up the penalties for mistake. Then bank policies would change, to address a new financial reality.
Personally, I think doing it twice to the same people is ample evidence of gross negligence.
The changed policy I meant would be some sort of check to make sure that the wrong house doesn’t get emptied. Whatever happened to cause this screw-up shouldn’t happen again.
The great thing about message boards is that when you’re not sure what somebody said, you can go back and check. I didn’t mention punitive damages at all in my first post.
Glancing over the applicable California law, though, the standard there is clear and convincing evidence of “oppression, fraud, or malice”, which is a really, really high bar.
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Personally, I think doing it twice to the same people is ample evidence of gross negligence.
[/QUOTE]
Whose gross negligence is it evidence of?