Marine's Lawsuit has Chase Bank refunding 2M...keep it up!

[Sgt Leprechaun]

Widest possible dissemination on this one folks....

It's about TIME these predatory morlocks got what is coming to them. I wasn't for a bailout, (no matter who was pushing it, R or D)and quite honestly, wouldn't shed a tear if ALL of these credit/mortgage companies collapsed and the employees were thrown into the breadlines.

Notice how Chase NOW wants to talk. FRAK them.

****
Beaufort Marine's lawsuit prompts Chase to refund $2M in mortgage overcharges


By JOSH McCANN
jmccann@islandpacket.com

Published Friday, January 21, 2011

Documents
PDF Rowles v. Chase http://media.islandpacket.com/smedia/2011/01/21/20/129566004901Complaint.source.prod_affiliate.9.pdf

PDF Rowles' affidavit http://media.islandpacket.com/smedia/2011/01/21/20/129566005218-1ExAPlaintiffAffidavit.source.prod_affiliate.9.pdf


U.S. Marine Capt. Jonathon Rowles was tired and frustrated after more than a year of fending off phone calls from mortgage-collection agents.


Then, while preparing for intense training with live ordnance in late 2009, the 29-year-old Beaufort resident and fighter-jet pilot began receiving repeated collection calls between 4 and 6 a.m. The calls were a clear violation of a federal law designed to protect active-duty military personnel, he said.

After deciding he could not afford to be woken up so early with other Marines' lives in his hands, he began recording every phone number from representatives of Chase Home Finance so he could send those calls directly to voicemail.


That, in part, was how Rowles began to build a case against the nation's second-largest bank, prompting its officials this week to admit mistakes to him and thousands of other military members. Because of Rowles' efforts, Chase officials told NBC News they improperly foreclosed on the homes of 14 military families and might have overcharged 4,000 more.

"I had completely lost faith that anyone at Chase would be willing to help," Rowles said in an affidavit filed this month in federal court.


PREPARING TO FIGHT

Rowles' case, for which his lawyers seek class-action status, is based on the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. The 2003 law allows active-duty troops to receive mortgage rate reductions, protects them from foreclosure and is designed to prevent worry about their finances while serving the country.

Shortly after his status was changed from reserve to active duty in 2006, Rowles says he wrote Chase to request the bank reduce the interest rate on his loan pursuant to the law.

The bank told Rowles he qualified for a reduction and said it had adjusted his rate.


The bank failed to immediately make the change, however, and also violated the law by requiring him to verify his active-duty status every 90 days for more than two years, threatening to foreclose on him and aggressively seeking to collect more than he should have owed on a 2004 mortgage for a home in Colorado, according to his complaint.

Chase's computer system apparently continually showed Rowles' account as delinquent even though his payments were automatically sent each month from his bank account, according to his affidavit.

He says he couldn't reach anyone from Chase's department responsible for the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, but the collectors always seemed to find him.

"I found that over the last two years, the collections department of Chase could find me any time of the day through numerous phone number -- they called my mother, called me at work, at home, during dinner, while I was sleeping, while my children were sleeping, and left many messages in order to try to collect on an account that had been improperly processed, and no one was looking to help or fix it," Rowles said in the affidavit. "But the (bank's) SCRA department, which should have been looking over my account and protecting me and my family from such insidious actions, never once tried to contact me in person to rectify the situation."

Rowles is stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and in 2009 moved his family to the Shadow Moss neighborhood.

While readying for a deployment to the Pacific in mid-2010, Rowles feared he would have to leave his pregnant wife, Julia, with the situation unresolved and with a chance something could happen to him overseas.

That's when he sought counsel with Beaufort law firm Harvey & Battey.

At first, the couple assumed their case was isolated. Their attorney, Bill Harvey, discovered it wasn't.

"We have reason to believe this was a systemic problem," said Harvey, whose firm is bringing the case with the Columbia law firm of Richard Harpootlian, former chairman of the S.C. Democratic Party.

BANK ADMITS MISTAKE

Chase officials have admitted to mistakes and said they are "deeply appreciative" of military personnel. They have reviewed their servicing of home loans to troops and will return about $2 million to those who might have paid more than required, they said.

"While any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly bad about the mistakes we made here," they said in a statement.

The bank has resolved all but one of the foreclosures.

Chase's troubles might not be finished, however.

Bill Nettles, U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, said his district "takes violations of this stature very seriously." He told Dow Jones Newswires he could neither confirm nor deny whether his office is investigating the matter.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said he has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to examine the issue, Dow Jones reported.

The head of the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren, said the bank's errors emphasize why the bureau is needed, according to the Dow Jones report.

Rowles lawsuit seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages.

Harvey said he's not yet sure how many people might be involved or how much money might be at stake, but he said Chase's $2 million gesture isn't enough.

"The refunds they've claimed to make don't touch it," he said.

The case has thrust the family into the national spotlight this week.

It has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, NPR and elsewhere since NBC aired a report Monday that included a phone interview with Julia Rowles on the "Today Show."

Jonathon Rowles recently returned from his deployment, but Julia -- who gave birth to the couple's second child six weeks prematurely while her husband was away -- is acting as the family's spokeswoman.

She said the Rowles are renting out their house in Colorado because they haven't been able to sell it.

She's relieved an end to her family's struggle -- which followed them from Pensacola, Fla., to San Diego to Beaufort -- seems near.

She vowed, however, to keep representing others affected.

"I'm going to fight until all of the problems have been rectified," she said.

****

Statement from Chase

We made mistakes here and we are fixing them. There is no finer group of people than the men and women in the armed services who fight to protect our country every day. We are deeply appreciative of those who fight to protect our country and Chase funds a number of programs that provide benefits to military personnel and veterans â€" and while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly bad about the mistakes we made here. Starting several months ago, we commenced a review of our servicing of home loans to military personnel to ensure that we are addressing any and all problems. We will be mailing a total of approximately $2 million in refunds to those who may have paid more than required. We now have a dedicated team in place devoted to servicing home loans for military personnel -- the members of our military deserve nothing less. We welcome the opportunity to talk to Captain Rowles and others who would like to discuss their accounts.

Christine Holevas
Media & Communications

[Integrity57]

Makes me wonder how many civilians they've also done this too.

[Komenko]

Makes me wonder how many civilians they've also done this too.

more than what we may think concidering that they are not protected like sirvice members are. I also bet that Chase isn't the only bank doing this! Didn't BofA have a settlement recently?

[Sgt Leprechaun]

Probably. Worst thing 'we' ever did was to use taxpayer money to bail them out.

[Rocky C]

Agree !!!

[FoxtrotOscar]

When our GOVERNMENT gets involved in anything.. it goes wrong..

BIG GOVERNMENT is not the answer...

They ARE the PROBLEM....

[micarr57]

Probably. Worst thing 'we' ever did was to use taxpayer money to bail them out.

couldn't agree with you more
be nice to see some of the financial type people in the un line

[PNW]

Hand out some jail time, that will make the Chase executives pay closer attention

[awbrown1462]

now a days if you steel someones money and get found out it was a mistake if you lie and get found out you misspoke whats next?

[indygti]

I'm glad I switched from Chase to Hickam Federal years ago in Hawaii. Money is the devil I swear.

[Lisa 23]

A Reservist in a New War, Against Foreclosure

by Diana B. Henriques
Thursday, January 27, 2011

provided by

Sgt. James B. Hurley on a bridge near the property he lost to foreclosure while serving with the National Guard in Iraq. (Erik Holladay for The New York Times)

While Sgt. James B. Hurley was away at war, he lost a heartbreaking battle at home.

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 (NYSE: DB - News) and its primary co-defendant, a Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS - News) 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.

A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment, noting that Saxon had handled the litigation on its behalf. A spokesman for Morgan Stanley, which bought Saxon in 2006, said that Saxon had revised its policy to ensure that it complied with the law and was willing to make "reasonable accommodations" to settle disputes, "especially for our servicemen and women." But the Hurley litigation has continued, he said, because of a "fundamental disagreement between the parties over damages."

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 Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and it protects service members on active duty from many of the legal consequences of their forced absence.

Even though some of the nation's military families have been sending their breadwinners into war zones for almost a decade, some of the nation's biggest lenders are still fumbling one the basic elements of this law -- its foreclosure protections.

Under the law, only a judge can authorize a foreclosure on a protected service member's home, even in states where court orders are not required for civilian foreclosures, and the judge can act only after a hearing where the military homeowner is represented. The law also caps a protected service member's mortgage rate at 6 percent.

By 2005, violations of the civil relief act were being reported all across the country, some involving prominent banks like Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC - News) and Citigroup (NYSE: C - News). Publicity about the violations spared some military families from foreclosure, prompted both banks to promise better compliance and put lenders on notice that service members were entitled to special relief.

But the message apparently did not get through. By 2006, a Marine captain in South Carolina was doing battle with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM - News) to get the mortgage interest rate reductions the act requires. Chase eventually reviewed its policies and, earlier this month, acknowledged it had overcharged thousands of military families on their mortgages and improperly foreclosed on 14 of them. After a public apology, Chase began mailing out about $2 million in refunds and working to reverse the foreclosures.

For armed forces in a war zone, a foreclosure back home is both a family crisis and a potentially deadly distraction from the military mission, military consumer advocates say.

"It can be devastating," said Holly Petraeus, the wife of Gen. David Petraeus and the leader of a team that is creating an office to serve military families within a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"It is a terrible situation for the family at home and for the service member abroad, who feels helpless," Mrs. Petraeus said. "I would hope that the recent problems will be a wake-up call for all banks to review their policies and be sure they comply with the act."

Chase's response, however belated, is in sharp contrast to the approach taken by Deutsche Bank and Saxon in the Hurley case.

Sergeant Hurley bought the land in 1994 and "was developing this property into something special," he said in a court affidavit. He put a double-wide manufactured home on the site and added a deck, hunting blinds, floating docks and storage buildings.

According to his lawyers, his financial troubles began in the summer of 2004, when his National Guard unit sent him to California to be trained to work as a power-generator mechanic in Iraq. Veterans of that duty advised him to buy certain tools not readily available in the war zone, he said in his affidavit. With that expense and his reduced income, he said, he fell behind on his mortgage -- a difficulty many part-time soldiers faced when reserve and National Guard units were mobilized.

Believing he was protected by the civil relief act -- as, indeed, he was, as of Sept. 11, 2004 -- his family repeatedly informed Saxon that Sergeant Hurley had been sent to Iraq. But Saxon refused to grant relief without copies of his individual military orders, which he did not yet have.

Although Saxon's demand would have been legitimate if Sergeant Hurley had been seeking a lower interest rate, the law did not require him to provide those orders to invoke his foreclosure protections.

Nevertheless, Saxon referred the case to its law firm, Orlans Associates in Troy, Mich., which completed the foreclosure without the court hearing required by law. The law firm filed an affidavit with the local sheriff saying there was no evidence Sergeant Hurley was on military duty. At a sheriff's sale in October 2004, the bank bought the property for $70,000, less than the $100,000 the sergeant owed on the mortgage.

Orlans acknowledged in a court filing that one of its lawyers learned in April 2005 that Sergeant Hurley had been on active duty since the previous October. Nevertheless, neither Saxon nor the law firm backtracked to ensure the foreclosure had been legal or took steps to prevent the seized property from being sold, according to the court record. Lawyers for Orlans Associates did not respond to a request for comment.

When Sergeant Hurley sued in May 2007, the defendants initially argued that he was not allowed to file a private lawsuit to enforce his rights under the civil relief act. Federal District Judge Gordon J. Quist agreed and threw the case out in the fall of 2008.

That drew a fierce reaction from Col. John S. Odom, Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer in Shreveport, La., who is working with Sergeant Hurley's local lawyer, Matthew R. Cooper, of Paw Paw, Mich.

Colonel Odom, recognized by Congress and the courts as an expert on the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, knew Judge Quist had missed a decision that overturned the one he had cited in his ruling. In December 2008, Colonel Odom appealed the ruling.

In March 2009, Judge Quist reversed himself, reinstated the Hurley case, ruled that the foreclosure had violated the civil relief act and found that punitive damages would be permitted, if warranted.

Despite that legal setback, the defendants soldiered on. As the court docket grew, they argued against allowing Sergeant Hurley to seek compensatory or punitive damages in the case. Judge Quist ruled last month that punitive damages were not warranted -- a ruling Colonel Odom has said he has challenged in court and, if necessary, will appeal.

"Nothing says you screwed up as clearly as a big punitive damages award," he said. "They are a deterrence that warns others not to do the same thing."

When the trial on damages begins in early March, Sergeant Hurley will have been fighting for almost four years over the illegal foreclosure, a fight he could not have waged without a legal team that will probably only be paid if the court orders the defendants to cover the legal bills.

Regardless of the trial outcome, Sergeant Hurley's dream home is likely to remain as far beyond his reach as it was when he was in Iraq. Its new owner has refused to entertain any offers for it and recently bought an adjoining lot.

Sergeant Hurley said he still loved the wooded refuge he drives past almost every day. "I was hoping I could get the property back," he said. "But they tell me there's just no way."
___
http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/artic...mod=loans-home

[Sgt Leprechaun]

Said it before and I'll say it again....these fuvks should be shut DOWN forever, and the people working for them tossed into the street and on the breadlines.

Quite frankly, if I were THIS guy...I'd be leaning toward some 'direct action' and to hell with jail.

These people are scumbags. And the guy who bought the house? He wouldn't be able to enjoy it if it were me. He's just as much of a scumbag so to hell with him too.

The solution for the rest of us? PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARDS AND NEVER, EVER, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, GET ANOTHER ONE. Let them starve on the vine.

[USNAviator]

The solution for the rest of us? PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARDS AND NEVER, EVER, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, GET ANOTHER ONE. Let them starve on the vine.

That's great advice. I don't know how many times I saw young enlisted get sucked into the vacuum of easy credit. And it wasn't only the enlisted, we had a Lt Cmdr in our squadron, a man of age and experience who lost a command post because he couldn't keep his card in his wallet

[Sgt Leprechaun]

Yup. I'm working mine down now. My tax refund for the last several years has gone to pay them off. I'm not done yet but getting there. Hope to have them ALL gone by the end of this year. Does it show that I detest credit card companies? LOL

[USNAviator]

Yup. I'm working mine down now. My tax refund for the last several years has gone to pay them off. I'm not done yet but getting there. Hope to have them ALL gone by the end of this year. Does it show that I detest credit card companies? LOL

That's the only way to go Jason. I remember that credit wasn't so easy to get. Usually you started off with a Sears card or a gas station card (do they still have those) slowly working your way up to the big time. IMO, if you must have a credit card, have one that forces you to pay the ballance off each month like an AMEX