Bay State High Court Hears 'Ibanez' Follow-Up Case Involving Unwitting 3rd Party Buyer Who Purchased Void Title On Improperly Foreclosed Home

In Boston, Masschusetts, Bloomberg reports:

• A Massachusetts man should be allowed to keep property he bought from U.S. Bancorp even though the bank didn’t have the right to foreclose on the previous owner, a lawyer argued before the state’s highest court.
• The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is hearing oral arguments today [Monday, May 2] in the appeal of a lower-court decision that said the buyer of residential property in Haverhill, Massachusetts, never owned it because U.S. Bancorp foreclosed before it got the mortgage.(1) If that decision is upheld it could have wide implications in the foreclosure crisis in which banks are accused of clouding home titles through sloppy transferring of mortgages.
• The lower court’s “statement that my client received nothing is what we disagree with,” Jeffrey Loeb, a lawyer for so-called third-party buyer Francis J. Bevilacqua III told the panel today.
• The state high court already ruled Jan. 7 in a different case, U.S. Bank v. Ibanez that banks can’t foreclose on a house if they don’t own the mortgage. That case didn’t address the status of those who buy property from someone after an invalid foreclosure.
• “If the decision is upheld, and generally applied, it likely will have adverse implications for hundreds or even thousands of Massachusetts property owners if they find themselves in Bevilacqua’s shoes,” the Mortgage Bankers Association wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.(2)
• Claims of wrongdoing by banks and loan servicers triggered a 50-state investigation last year into whether thousands of U.S. foreclosures were properly documented during the housing collapse.

Source: Massachusetts Court Hears Pivotal Mortgage-Transfer Case in Foreclosure.

See also:

• Reuters: Mass. high court wades back into foreclosure mess,
• Faulty Foreclosure Case in Massachusetts High Court May Hurt Home Buyers for an earlier Bloomberg story on this case.

For Massachusetts Land Court Judge Keith C. Long's ruling currently being reviewed by the state's high court, see Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez, MISC 10-427157 (KCL), 2010 WL 3351481 (Mass. Land Ct. Aug. 26, 2010).

(1) See Post-'Ibanez' Fallout Begins; Mass. High Court Takes Case Of Unwitting 3rd Party Buyer Left Holding The Bag w/ Void Title On Improperly F'closed Home.

(2) For the briefs filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, see:

• Appellant Bevilacqua Brief,
• Amicus American Land Title Association Brief,
• Amicus WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School Brief,
• Amicus Mortgage Bankers Association Brief,
• Amicus Massachusetts Attorney General Brief,
• Amicus Professor Adam J. Levitin Brief (together with Professors Christopher L. Peterson, Katherine Porter, John A.E. Pottow) ("[U].S. Bank, N.A., was no more capable of passing on good title to the Rodriguez property than a common thief"),
• Amicus Massachusetts Association of Bank Counsel, Inc. Brief.