Happens a lot really. They had a family in the local paper that have a summer home in the family for nearly 100 years. This spring somebody moved in and gutted the place. Nobody seems to know what happened to 100 years of family history but Ebay seems to have handled a bit of it. Heads will roll it was a lawyers summer home.

Originally posted by deckdel



Potentially: seek the other similar complainants for the same bank, and issue class action suite against the bank, due to their unlawful practices, severe discrepancies in due diligence, and lack of controls for assuring actual ownership for the properties (and which properties are actually the case).

And for that reason already, the class action should be raised, and the bank brought back to civil order.

This post is a perfect example why untrained internet lurkers sitting in mommy's dank, fetid basement should not be giving out what purports to be legal advice and why readers should ignore every word in such a post.
A class action suit (not suite, by the way) is only available when people in the class (those "similarly situated") can not be readily identified. If you can find "other claimants" then class action status is not available, either under F.R.C.P. 23 or the state versions.
And damages for "emotional distress" are not recoverable in a civil action for the torts of trespass or conversion, which is what the bank did.

So does that mean I can wrongfully "foreclose" on my local wellsfargo branch and get away with an "oh my bad" or would i be considered a bank robber

they "accidentally" broke down probably the only house on the block that didn't have a mortgage.

i believe it was creative revenue generating.

after months and months of silence and being ignored, the bank would have offered the family a nice mortgage deal to build a new house if the media didn't get involved.

and they probably would have took it out of frustration.

Let me see here. Wells Fargo hires a CONTRACTOR to handle it's foreclosures. The CONTRACTOR goes too the wrong address. The CONTRACTOR trashes the place and removes the couple's possessions. The CONTRACTOR loses the couple's possessions. Why are we blaming Wells Fargo? I know. They are an EVIL bank, they make a PROFIT.

Give me a break. Blame the CONTRACTOR. They are the ones who screwed up. They are the ones who are liable.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
Let me see here. Wells Fargo hires a CONTRACTOR to handle it's foreclosures. The CONTRACTOR goes too the wrong address. The CONTRACTOR trashes the place and removes the couple's possessions. The CONTRACTOR loses the couple's possessions. Why are we blaming Wells Fargo? I know. They are an EVIL bank, they make a PROFIT.

Give me a break. Blame the CONTRACTOR. They are the ones who screwed up. They are the ones who are liable.

Legally both Wells Fargo and the contractor are joint and severally liable.

Perhaps Wells Fargo should be more careful who it employs if it wishes to avoid both legal liability and bad publicity?

The sub contractor was hired by the bank. Irregardless of whether it was the contractors fault, the bank was at fault, after all it was their contractor. They could get a million bucks for that at least. Criminal charges can be brought against the contractor for breaking and entering also, regardless of intent, because they were not at the right place. Family heirlooms are priceless. This has nothing to do with insured valuations. If you have insurance, there is usually or customary applied to things unless other wise stated. I'd go after the bank and insist on trial by jury and charge the bank official who authorized it with grand larceny. Someone has to do some time for this.

Remedy: Civil Lawsuit
Award: Large Punitive Damages

Originally posted by JIMC5499
Let me see here. Wells Fargo hires a CONTRACTOR to handle it's foreclosures. The CONTRACTOR goes too the wrong address. The CONTRACTOR trashes the place and removes the couple's possessions. The CONTRACTOR loses the couple's possessions. Why are we blaming Wells Fargo? I know. They are an EVIL bank, they make a PROFIT.

Give me a break. Blame the CONTRACTOR. They are the ones who screwed up. They are the ones who are liable.

After re-reading the article from mutiple sources, it wasn't once, it was twice.

TWICE the bank sent contractors, and twice the contractors screwed up and went to the SAME wrong home...

So at which point does the bank assume responsibility? The point when media attention is brought to bare.

I would say the second time is when the bank becomes criminally negligent for not ensuring the 2nd contractor went to the right home.

How do we know this contracted crew, or Wells Fargo themselves, do these things "accidentally?" It seems to happen quite often according to the article. Much more often than seems normal in my opinion. So how is this any different from simple burglary and theft? That's what it seems like to me.

And it is obvious that the bank wasn't going to do anything about their wrong, until the media got involved. So they could do this all over the place, on purpose, and simply claim it was an accident. Accident or not, I think criminal files should be charged against a few people in this case. It doesn't matter if it was an accident, because they are still liable for their actions, and should have done their jobs better. Mistakes like this are easily avoided, or should be, so there is no excuse.

Perhaps I should chime in here and explain how this works...

The bank doesn't have enough man power to evict Nd clean and manage all these properties. What they do is hire a real estate management company ( my best friend owns such a company but he's not a douche I swear).

The management company tries to get people out of their homes when they are in foreclosure. First thy ask nicely... Then they offer them up to 5k usually... Even if they are renters and not the actual property owner ( or former owner as the case may be).

If that doesn't work, a sheriff has to be called in.

Then the bank puts out a request for bids to clean out the house, to fix it up, up keep the property.

Those are all separate companies usually.

The clean up crews are almost always day laborers from outside home depot.

What likely happened here is the clean up crew got the wrong house. The day laborers usually keep any valuables for themselves. Since they are undocumented, the family is beat.

It's really a shame... I used to sell mortgages in 2005 while in my senior year of college. Once I figured out that we were building a hou of cards, I left. the banks really did a number on us. The banks should all be shut down. Everyone should switch to a credit union. They are far better, honest, and most of all fair.

This is an example of the media doing what they're supposed to do, protect the public from corporate and government corruption. Unfortunately, I think both are in bed together with the media.

This is not very surprising. What do you expect to happen when there is private property and money? Human life gets put on the back burner.

Originally posted by ollncasino
Banks treat people like this simply because they can. They think they are above the law.

They are. Haven't you read the posts regarding the non prosicution of bank CEOs.