We have been approached by few military families whose home were foreclosed while the owner were performing military services overseas. This is very painful, but unfortunately, it has been done and the homes were foreclosed in clear violation of the SCRA. In one case, our law office helped getting back garnished wages of a police officer back. Two mortgage servicing companies have agreed to settle federal complaints that they wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of at least 178 military service members and to set aside a minimum of $22 million to compensate those victims. This is a great victory for the Justice Department that various lenders had settled such cases. The lenders include, of course the notorious one i.e Countrywide Home Loan Servicing and Saxon Mortgage Services. These companies knowingly and repeatedly violated the Service members Civil Relief Act, a federal law that extends an array of financial and legal protections to military personnel. The former Countrywide unit agreed to pay $20 million to approximately 160 victims of illegal foreclosures from January 2006 to May 2009. It also agreed to reimburse victims of any other illegal military foreclosures found to have occurred from May 2009 to the end of last year.
NY Times has posted one such painful story of Sgt. James B. Hourley who was away on war duties in Iraq. In violation of a law intended to protect active military personnel from creditors, agents of Deutsche Bank foreclosed on his small Michigan house, forcing Sergeant Hurley’s wife, Brandie, and her two young children to move out and find shelter elsewhere.
“When the sergeant returned in December 2005, he drove past the densely wooded riverfront property outside Hartford, Mich. The peaceful little home was still there — winter birds still darted over the gazebo he had built near the water’s edge — but it almost certainly would never be his again. Less than two months before his return from the war, the bank’s agents sold the property to a buyer in Chicago for $76,000. Since then, Sergeant Hurley has been on an odyssey through the legal system, with little hope of a happy ending — indeed, the foreclosure that cost him his home may also cost him his marriage. ”Brandie took this very badly,” said Sergeant Hurley, 45, a plainspoken man who was disabled in Iraq and is now unemployed. ”We’re trying to piece it together.”
“In March 2009, a federal judge ruled that the bank’s foreclosure in 2004 violated federal law but the battle did not end there for Sergeant Hurley. Typically, banks respond quickly to public reports of errors affecting military families. But today, more than six years after the illegal foreclosure, Deutsche Bank Trust Company and its primary co-defendant, a Morgan Stanley subsidiary called Saxon Mortgage Services, are still in court disputing whether Sergeant Hurley is owed significant damages. Exhibits show that at least 100 other military mortgages are being serviced for Deutsche Bank, but it is not clear whether other service members have been affected by the policy that resulted in the Hurley foreclosure.”
In court papers, lawyers for Saxon and the bank assert the sergeant is entitled to recover no more than the fair market value of his lost home. His lawyers argue that the defendants should pay much more than that — including an award of punitive damages to deter big lenders from future violations of the law. The law is called the Service members Civil Relief Act, and it protects service members on active duty from many of the legal consequences of their forced absence.
We suggest as a foreclosure defense attorney, and working in this field for long time, we encourage any military family (living in Nevada) to ask our free legal help in this regard. We would not charge any money upfront from any such familiy AND EVEN ADVANCE COURT COST, if they have meritorious case while their loved one were performing military services overseas. Call us at (702) 270-9100 and even get a free consultation over the phone.
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