Mortgage Lenders Kill People - Part II

I wrote about a wrongful death case several years ago in which a widowed plaintiff alleged that her husband was killed by a mortgage lender's harassing telephone calls. HERE is a link to that story. I never heard how that case was resolved.

Today, I saw the following article about a guy who DIED IN COURT at a hearing in his lawsuit against Wells Fargo. He was suing them for screwing up his real estate tax escrow and causing him to default on his mortgage. These murderous mortgage lenders are out of control!!

According to the now-deceased plaintiff, a Wells Fargo typo ultimately resulted in foreclosure on his home. When Larry Delassus’ received a demand from Wells Fargo that he pay two years of late property taxes on his property in order to avoid foreclosure, he was understandably surprised. Delassus had paid his property taxes every year and did not owe a penny. In fact, Wells Fargo had paid property taxes on another neighboring property, but due to a two-digit typo, sent the bills to Delassus. Delassus, who spent a fair amount of time in and out of hospitals did not question the demand for back taxes or the increase in his mortgage (from $1,237.69 a month to $2,429.13 a month), but simply stopped paying his mortgage and moved into an assisted-living home in Carson, California. It was not until nearly two years later than his attorney discovered the typo and attempted to fight the foreclosure. The bank’s attorney acknowledged the error but refused to let Delassus resume paying his mortgage without catching up via a reinstatement payment first. Initially, Delassus was unable to find out how much he owed in reinstatement and would likely have been unable to pay it anyway on his fixed income. When he finally received an amount in January 2011, it was the sum of $337,250.40, owed in the next 24 hours or the foreclosure would move forward. The condo was sold in May 2011[1]. The story took a truly tragic turn, however, when Delassus died in court last December while pursuing a negligence and discrimination case against Wells Fargo. At the time of his foreclosure, Delassus was actually six months ahead on his property taxes[2]. Nevertheless, the judge had already indicated that she planned to rule for Wells Fargo, which led a bank spokeswoman to say that “there was no reason for Mr. Delassus to attend” after expressing sympathy over his death.