On Cloaking Devices And Usury: Lender Can Be Sued If It Uses Corporate Shell To Cloak A Personal Loan As A Business Loan

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

Cloaking devices are common in sci-fi movies like Star Trek and Star Wars. They are used to render an object, usually a spaceship, invisible to nearly all forms of detection. Although scientists are apparently working to make real-life cloaking devices, at this point they exist only in the movies and, apparently, in New Jersey courts, at least according to the Appellate Division in Amelio v. Gordon.

In Amelio, plaintiff owed an apartment building in Hoboken. He approached defendants about obtaining a loan to finish renovations on three units in the building, along with the common areas. Plaintiff claimed that defendants instructed him to create a corporate entity to obtain the loan. Plaintiff did as he was instructed, and formed a limited liability company, which obtained the loan from defendants. Plaintiff, who was identified as the managing member of the limited liability company, signed the loan documents on behalf of the company.

Plaintiff later sued, arguing that the fees and interest payments under the loan exceeded the amounts allowable under New Jersey's usury laws. He also claimed that defendants fraudulently convinced him to create a limited liability company and have that entity obtain the loan, just so they could charge him usurious fees and interest. Plaintiff sued in his individual capacity, not on behalf of the limited liability company. On the day of trial, defendants argued that the complaint had to be dismissed because plaintiff lacked standing to sue since the company was the borrower, not plaintiff. With little explanation, the trial court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint. Plaintiff appealed.

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Supreme Court: Party That Buys Defaulted Debt Not A “Debt Collector” Under The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

In Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc., Justice Gorsuch delivered his first opinion for the Supreme Court, and in doing so, provided an interesting opinion on a relatively boring issue, and subconsciously (I assume) invoked the movie Repo Man, a classic (?) mid-1980's movie starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, which the website, imdb.com, summarized as follows: "Young punk Otto [Estevez] becomes a repo man after helping to steal a car, and stumbles into a world of wackiness as a result."

Neither the facts nor the law in Henson were wacky. Plaintiffs took out loans from CitiFinancial Auto to buy cars, but later defaulted on those loans. Defendant purchased the defaulted loans and sought to collect the debt from plaintiffs in ways that plaintiffs claimed violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Act, which was designed to curtail "[d]isruptive dinnertime calls, downright deceit and more besides" authorizes private lawsuits and "weighty fines" for anyone who engages in "wayward collection practices." But, it only applies to "debt collectors," a term that is defined to include anyone who "regularly collects or attempts to collect . . . debts owed or due . . . another." The question in Henson was whether a party who purchases debts originated by someone else and then seeks to collect those debts for its own account qualifies as a debt collector." Justice Gorsuch framed the issue as follows:

Everyone agrees that the term ["debt collector"] embraces the repo man – someone hired by a creditor to collect an outstanding debt. What if you purchase a debt and then try to collect it for yourself – does that make you a "debt collector" too? That 's the nub of the dispute now before us.

The district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit sided with defendant, holding that a party that buys defaulted debt and collects it for its own account is not a "debt collector." In doing so, however, the Fourth Circuit acknowledged that other circuit courts had come to the opposite conclusion. The U.S. Supreme Court took the case to clear up this split.

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(I Swear This Is Not A Boring Post About) Foreclosures And Statutes Of Limitations

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

Although foreclosures have not been in the news as much lately as they were several months ago, New Jersey courts still issue at least one or two decisions per week involving residential foreclosures. While I have written about some of the more interesting ones in the past (here, here, and here), most now follow a familiar pattern – final judgment is entered against a borrower, the borrower moves to vacate the judgment arguing that the lender lacks standing, and (almost always) the court finds that the lender had standing and denies the motion. Every now and again, however, a court addresses an interesting issue worth writing about. The Law Division's decision in Deutsche Bank National Trust Company v. Hochmeyer is one of these cases.

In Hochmeyer, defendant entered into a mortgage with a maturity date of June 1, 2036 that was recorded on October 25, 2007. Defendant defaulted on December 1, 2006. Remember these dates. They will be important later on.

Under New Jersey law, a lawsuit to foreclose on a residential mortgage must be brought before the later of (1) six years from the date when the last payment is made or "the maturity date set forth in the mortgage," OR (2) thirty six years from the date the mortgage was recorded, OR (3) twenty years from the date of default. In other words, every foreclosure lawsuit has three potential end dates for the statute of limitations, but only the earliest one counts.

In Hochmeyer, the parties agreed that calculating the limitations period using the second or third options would yield dates many years in the future — thirty six years from the date the mortgage was recorded would be October 25, 2043, and twenty years from the date of default would be December 1, 2026. They disagreed, however, over the calculation under the first option. The difference was important because, under defendant's approach, the date not only would have been the earliest one, and thus the operative one, but it would have expired before the complaint was filed rendering the complaint untimely. Plaintiff obviously disagreed with defendant's approach. For the reasons set forth below, the court sided with plaintiff.

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If Courts Awarded Points For Creativity, These Defendants Might Have Received A Few!

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)

Tax sale foreclosures are rarely that interesting. This is purely my opinion, and I understand that buying tax sale certificates can be a lucrative trade, but I think I am probably not alone in saying that the field tends to be a bit dry. This is not always the case, however, and the best proof of this might be the recent decision in Lien Times, LLC v. Rader. (It is not what makes the case interesting, but Lien Times is a great name for an entity that buys tax liens.)

Lien Times started out with a fairly routine set of facts. Defendants fell behind on the taxes for their home, so the township issued a Certificate of Sale for unpaid municipal tax liens. Plaintiff purchased the Certificate of Sale. Plaintiff eventually foreclosed on the lien and the property was auctioned at a sheriff's sale . This is where it gets interesting.

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Another Lesson From A New Jersey Court On The UCC And Standing To Foreclose

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)

The running battle between lenders and borrowers over standing to foreclose continues in the Garden State. A recent decision from the Appellate Division — Bank of New York v. Ukpe — is the latest in an ever-growing body of case law addressing this issue from seemingly every conceivable angle.

The facts in Ukpe will be familiar to anyone who has followed the wave of residential foreclosures in recent years. Defendants applied for a mortgage from Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. (“CHL”). They claimed that they told the broker that they could not afford a monthly payment over $1,000 and were assured by the broker that the monthly payment would not exceed this amount. However, at the closing, they learned that the monthly payment would be almost $1,500 per month. They alleged that the broker told them not to worry because they could refinance the loan a few months after closing. Nonetheless, two years later, after several unsuccessful attempts to refinance the loan, Defendants defaulted.

Defendants’ note was made "payable to lender," and the mortgage, after it was recorded, was held by Mortgage Electric Recording System ("MERS") as nominee for the lender. Shortly after being recorded, the mortgage was securitized along with other mortgages. As part of this process, several entities entered into a "Pooling and Servicing Agreement" ("PSA"). Under the PSA, CHL was identified as a "seller," CWABS, Inc. was identified as the "depositor" and "master servicer," and the Bank of New York ("BNY") was identified as the "trustee." Under the PSA, the CHL and the other “sellers” transferred the mortgages to CWABS, Inc., which then transferred them to BNY, which held the mortgages for the benefit of the investors in the newly-created security. The PSA also required the original mortgage notes to be endorsed in blank and delivered to BNY.

After Defendants defaulted, BNY filed a foreclosure complaint. In response, Defendants claimed, among other things, that BNY lacked standing to foreclose because it was not a holder in due course. The trial court rejected this claim and the Appellate Division affirmed. In doing so, the Appellate Division provided a crash course in what it means to be a holder in due course.

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