http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/al-lewis-wells-fargo-bank-sues/
If they lose, will they appeal?
Wow, that’s crazy. Really, really crazy.
Time to switch banks, I guess.
I would wait and go with the winner. 
Could be worse, I guess. You could go with the loser…
It’s a win-lose situation.
If they counter sue themself , then they can both be losers.
Most likely, this is the result of people simply following established procedures, without being given the authority to use any common sense and deviate from the written rules. I have worked in places like that, and it is very frustrating if you actually care about what you’re doing. If you just strictly follow the approved procedures, it’s pretty likely that you won’t get into any significant troubles. When something idiotic like this happens, just blame “the system” and say this is what the instructions require you to do. On the other hand, if you try to do the right thing and run this up the flag pole, there’s a decent chance that your manager may either be too stupid or simply doesn’t care enough to take the time to look into the problem; worse, if your manager is really stupid, he or she may think that you don’t know how to follow instructions and you’re trying to stir up troubles. If something bad happens, you may also become the scapegoat for not following the established procedures. Given the choice, what would you do?
Unfortunately, cultures like that are not uncommon in many large corporations and the government.
As I read it, the bank holding the first mortgage needs to file against the secondary mortgage holder(s) to preserve their rights as majority (probably 80%) lienholder of the property. Procedure is procedure, even if the same bank holds both mortgages.
May not even be a case of someone at the bank not being sensible enough to question why they’re suing themselves - the article hints that it’s a quirk of Florida law that requires this apparent insanity.
I think the condo owner hit on a possible reason: “McKillop, the condo owner’s attorney, told me he thinks Wells Fargo doesn’t know what it’s doing, and that its lawyers figure it is all billable hours to them.”
The real winners are, of course, Well’s Fargo’s attornies.
I sometimes whack myself on the arm if I see a Volkswagen Beetle going down the street and there’s no one else around.
As a Wachovia employee, this article is going to be gold when I get to work…
They’re not the only ones having to deal with themselves…
We had something similar happen when we tried to purchase a short sale. It reads goofy with the fox news spin, but it happens a lot.
Grande Bank(not its real name) held the first and second mortgages. They had securitized the primary mortgage and a division of Grande was responsible for the servicing of the loan. So Grande had already been fully reimbursed for the first mortgage and was only responsible for the servicing.
The second mortgage was only held by Grande proper. It was managed by an entirely different division.
So there were two parts of the company with different goals in regards to the sale. The first part had to represent (and query) investors. The second the bank. Normally the second mortgage takes a bath on short sales. But they negotiate for how much of a bath with the primary.
Because everything banks do provokes a lot of scrutiny they had to treat it as two separate entities so that both the Grande shareholders and the securitized servicees were treated fairly. In this case any unilateral non negotiated result would have looked bad. Looking bad means lawsuits from groups of people who go through lawyers like I go through TP.
A few years ago, didn’t Fox sue the TV network that produces The Simpsons?
Fox produces The Simpsons, and no. What happened is that some execs at Fox News got annoyed at a joke on The Simpsons, and started a stupid rumor about suing them. Then Rupert told them all to STFU and GBTW.
Ah, OK. I guess I heard the rumor as truth, but never heard the follow-up.
Reading between the lines of the article, its a requirement of Florida law. If you have to name all of the lien holders and you hold both liens, what can you do? Procedurally, you are required to name everyone. I don’t do foreclosure in my jurisdiction, but I wonder if you would have to do the same thing here.
But surely they could release the lien from the second mortgage without a lawsuit, no? Suppose I were one of a similar guy’s tenants, and his negligent upkeep of the property had resulted in some of my stuff being wrecked. I take him to small claims court, win, and he doesn’t pay. I place a lien on the building for my $300 judgment (I’ve since moved so I can’t just withhold rent or anything). Now he’s being foreclosed on, and my lien is the only one besides the primary mortgage. They have to sue me? Can’t they just ask me to sign a waiver of some sort? Since I have no prospect of getting my $300, I sure don’t want to have to show up at court over it. Of course, I could just not show up and there’d be a summary judgement against me, I expect. Seems a waste of the court’s time.
Note that Wells Fargo in this case has retained (different) legal counsel for both sides of the case. If they figured to just win a summary judgement against themselves based on not showing up to defend themselves against themselves, they have an odd way of going about it.
Could, maybe…but they wouldn’t want to do that. The impression I get from the article is that Wells Fargo has both a first and a second mortgage, but there are other lienholders involved. Wells has a claim under the first mortgage. They also have a claim under the second mortgage. In theory, if the property is sold, the money will be paid to the leinholders in the order of seniority of their liens until the money runs out. Wells wants to be paid in full on the first mortgage, and paid as much as they can get on the second. If they cancel the second mortgage, then the bank that has the third mortgage says thanks, but there’s no benefit to Wells or any shareholders.