Sunday, June 24, 2012

Securitization Screw-Ups - Litigation Update

Georgetown University Law School Professor Adam Levitin writes in Credit Slips:
  • The wheels of litigation move slowly, but there are a couple of recent securitization fail litigation decisions that are worthy of note. First, in the Congress case, a wrongful foreclosure action in Alabama (see my previous blogging on it here), the Alabama appellate court reversed and remanded, a victory for the homeowner.

  • The reversal and remand was on a rather narrow ground, namely that the trial court applied too demanding a standard when evaluating the homeowner's argument that the allonge in the case had been fabricated. Yet this means that this securitization fail case is still alive. It's also interesting to see how suspicious some courts have become about mysteriously appearing allonges and the like.

  • Second, the Illinois Court of Appeals for the 2d District just issued a ruling in a commercial mortgage foreclosure case, Bank of Am. Nat'l Ass'n v. Bassman FBT, 2012 Ill. App. LEXIS 487 (Ill. App. Ct. 2d Dist. 2012), with some wide reaching implications for securitization fail arguments. It's mainly a choice of law opinion, but there are two interesting things about the case.