Brooklyn Judge/Movie Buff Gives Standing-Lacking, 'Vampire-Like' Bankster The Boot In F'closure Action; Compares Attorney To Dracula's Servant For Representing The "Living Dead"

In Brooklyn, New York, Reuters reports:

• Something scary has been haunting a homeowner facing foreclosure in Brooklyn -- a "living dead" bank that a judge compared to Dracula.
  
  In a decision Thursday involving an apparent case of robo-signing, Kings County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack questioned how the failed thrift IndyMac Federal Bank could have initiated a foreclosure on a $460,000 mortgage when the bank ceased to legally exist three weeks earlier.
  
  For IndyMac to have standing to foreclose on homeowner Mendel Meisels' property "would be the legal equivalent of a vampire -- the 'living dead,'" Schack said.
  
  The judge, a frequent critic of mortgage servicing abuses, also chastised the law firm that brought the foreclosure action, Fein, Such & Crane. The firm faces possible sanctions from Schack for "engaging in frivolous conduct" by bringing the case on behalf of the defunct bank, the decision said. Schack compared Fein Such to Dracula's servant Renfield in the 1931 film about Bram Stoker's vampire staring Bela Lugosi.
  
  "[Fein Such], similar to Renfield, throughout its papers and at oral argument demonstrated its loyalty by not betraying its client and Master, the 'living dead' IndyMac Fed," Schack wrote.

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• In his decision, Schack said IndyMac ceased to exist by the time of the foreclosure and was unable to be named as a party in the lawsuit following its sale to OneWest. Schack cited a 2009 appellate decision, which held that after a merger, the acquired bank ceases to exist and can't be named as a party in litigation.(1)
  
  The judge also faulted the "numerous defects" in how the mortgage and note were assigned to IndyMac by Mortgage Electronic Registrations Systems, Inc, the privately held electronic mortgage registry set up by the banks.

For more, see Judge tosses foreclosure suit by 'living dead' bank IndyMac.

For the ruling, see IndyMac Fed. Bank, FSB v Meisels,2012 NY Slip Op 51902(U) [Sup Ct, Kings County, October 4, 2012).

(1) From the ruling:

• The Appellate Division, Second Department, in Westside Federal Sav. & Loan Ass'n v Fitzgerald (136 AD2d 699 [2d Dept 1988]), quoting Sheldon v Kimberly-Clark Corp. (105 AD2d 273, 276 [2d Dept 1984]), instructed that once a banking institution has been merged or absorbed by another banking institution "the absorbed corporation immediately ceases to exist as a separate entity, and may no longer be a named party in litigation." (See Zarzcyki v Lan Metal Products, Corp., 62 AD3d 788, 789 [2d Dept 2009]).

(2) MERS' assignor, as Vice President of MERS, for the "living dead" INDYMAC, was the infamous robosigner Erica Johnson-Seck, which Justice Schack, in several previous decisions, most notably in OneWest Bank, F.S.B. v Drayton (29 Misc 3d 1021 [Sup Ct, Kings County 2010]), discussed Ms. Johnson-Seck's robosigning escapades.