New State Law May Help Nevada Homeowner Hammer Lender, Others For Trashing Home Misidentified As Foreclosure

In Las Vegas, Nevada, the Las Vegas Sun reports:

• A Las Vegas woman whose condo was mistakenly emptied in a bungled foreclosure action could be the first person to benefit from a new state law. [...] A crew that clears out foreclosed properties had been sent into [Nilly] Mauck’s condo by the Brenkus Team, a Henderson real estate group. Brenkus has accepted responsibility, saying it was just a mix-up. The foreclosure was a neighboring condo unit.

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• It all appears to add up to a solid lawsuit for Mauck, and she has a law that took effect Oct. 1 that will work in her favor. Under the state’s old law for a case like hers, aggrieved homeowners could collect triple the amount of damages only for the real estate — for the loss of the property if it was sold out from under the real owner or for loss of use of the property if the real owner was locked out, or if the building itself was damaged, for example. The change allows for triple damages for personal property. So Mauck could be awarded three times the value of what was removed from her condo.(1)

For more, see They foreclosed on the wrong house (A neighboring property was going into foreclosure, but her condo was cleaned out. A new law might help).

(1) According to the story, the lawyer representing Brenkus in Mauck’s case is Albert Marquis, who ironically, was the attorney who represented a Las Vegas couple in a high-profile foreclosure mix-up a few years ago — the one that spurred the Nevada Legislature and Gov. Jim Gibbons to approve the new law. The couple, Gerald and Katrina Thitchener, were mistakenly placed on a foreclosure list in 2002 and were out of town when their residence was cleaned out. They won a $3.1 million judgment against Countrywide Home Loans, but that award was reduced by the Nevada Supreme Court. The high court disallowed the tripling of damages for the loss of personal property. For the Nevada Supreme Court ruling in that case, see Countrywide Home Loans v. Thitchener, 192 P.3d 243; 2008 Nev. LEXIS 79; 124 Nev. Adv. Rep. 64 (September 11, 2008).