The Foreclosure Crisis: Time to Put the Mortgage Industry in Federal Court

Another major bank, Wells Fargo, announced today that it's placing its foreclosures under review. Morgan Stanley estimated that as many as 9 million foreclosures might be open to legal challenge. (See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-12/disputes-may-affect-9-million-foreclosures-morgan-stanley-says.html.) Mortgages whose ownership is unclear create an additional, potentially massive problem. They may have to be written off bank balance sheets. Or, if they were supposedly sold but really not, the "purchasing" investors may be entitled to reimbursement for failure of the underwriting bank to deliver the mortgages. The number of mortgages where title is unclear hasn't been reported. But it could be very large.

Legal processes are erupting nationwide. Lawsuits by the truckload are being filed. Attorneys general in 40 or more states are investigating. Federal agencies and departments are huddling and inquiring. Subpoenas are flying. The legal profession is smiling. Its recession has just ended and prosperity is around the corner.

The foreclosure crisis has become a raging bull. There are, or will be, many, many thousands of lawsuits brought over one aspect or another of the morass. The courts will be clogged for years. Title to millions of homes could be clouded for a long time. Real estate sales could slump as buyers back off and title insurance becomes far more expensive than before.

There's no easy or quick way out of the mess. Indeed, we got into this mess because banks owning or servicing mortgages wanted a quick and easy way through the complexities of recording liens against real estate and foreclosing on those liens. Those banks apparently didn't want to bother with the due process of law. They will now get a shipload of due process, from the courts of just about every state in the nation, and many federal courts as well.

Not even Charles Dickens could write so byzantine a novel, nor Mary Shelley so horrifying a story. The prospect of 50 or more judicial systems reaching every variety of result in this ocean of litigation (and taking years to do so), with no established mechanism for consistency or predictability, is stupefying. Homeowners could experience widely varying outcomes, depending on where they live. Investors in mortgage-backed investments may have little or no idea what their now increasingly illiquid investments are worth. Banks would face unenviable choices for accounting for the situation. Mortgage investors and bank shareholders may well indulge in class action litigation.

A gargantuan problem such as this needs an organized and unified nationwide process for resolution. The current multi-jurisdictional mosh pit promises only legal pandemonium. The financial markets will stomach such bedlam for only so long, and that won't be very long.

But how to institute a national claims resolution process? Federal regulators can correctly say, as they did with the Lehman situation, that they have no statutory authority to take on the problem. State officials have no authority beyond the borders of their respective states.

A claims process in federal court may offer a solution. The process would involve reviewing records relating to mortgage ownership, resolving disputes and deciding who owns what. Attorneys with appropriate backgrounds could be recruited to serve as special masters to handle the enormous amount of work this would entail. The federal claims process could also look into foreclosures, past, present and prospective, and resolve uncertainties and competing claims. (The latter process could be handled through related proceedings in federal district courts in each state, where local lawyers having knowledge of their particular state's laws could serve as special masters to resolve mortgage recordation and foreclosure issues, but as part of a national process to keep the overall resolution of the problem coordinated.) By using attorneys as special masters, the resources of the courts would be magnified exponentially. As things now stand, the foreclosure process has clogged up numerous state courts, with no obvious way to clear up the traffic jams.

Other claims, such as class actions by investors or shareholders, could also be incorporated into the master claims process and resolved as part and parcel of the nationwide cleanup of the mortgage market and foreclosure process. Judges and federal magistrates might be the best adjudicators for these other claims, as they are the most likely to resemble the kind of litigation judges and magistrates routinely handle.

A unified national process could offer at least some degree of consistency in procedures and principles. It might also provide for coordination of various claims, and some notion of a timetable. And the appeals process would be greatly simplified. Information about the mortgage problems would be centralized and presented in a more organized way, offering greater transparency to the financial markets. The big banks, which may face the greatest liabilities here, would have a single process in which to resolve the myriad claims they now likely face, simplifying their management, accounting and regulatory problems.

The federal courts have experience administering cases with vast numbers of claims. Products liability litigation over asbestos related illness and injury provides an example, in which the claims of thousands of individuals have been resolved, in some cases with substantial payments. A nationwide mortgage and foreclosure cleanup process might well be the most complex proceeding ever undertaken by the federal courts. But if there were ever a time to take on such a challenge, this is it.

There isn't an obvious way to institute such a proceeding. Perhaps a number of interested parties, including major banks, the key mortgage guarantors such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their regulator (OFHEO, or Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight), the FHA, as many state attorneys general as can be mustered, federal financial regulators (citing their need to promote the safety and soundness of banks, and monitor and control systemic risk), and whoever else has legal standing to join the party could band together and petition a federal district court in Washington or New York (where the federal district courts have substantial experience handling massive litigation, and where there are hordes of lawyers who could be lined up to serve as special masters). As a legal foundation for such a process, the petitioners might invoke the equity jurisdiction of the federal courts (a body of law that, more or less, says the courts can, within certain limits, create solutions to problems that the existing legal system can't handle or doesn't handle well). Even though it's unlikely any of these parties alone could convince a court to institute such a proceeding, the combined interests of a consortium of interested parties might present a strong enough foundation that a judge would find jurisdiction.

Equity jurisprudence may be insufficient. If so, an act of Congress would be required. That's a scary thought. The temptation for the politicians to politicize such a process is obvious. But the alternative is a legal quagmire stretching from sea to shining sea. A unified national claims process, even if polluted by the underhanded, craven and disgraceful manipulations of pompous, self-interested politicians, may offer a less imperfect solution. (The biggest problem could turn out to be that Congress won't act quickly enough, a distinct possibility given today's shifting political winds; and that would aggravate a seriously aggravated situation.)

The bonfire of the mortgages is burning hot and fiercely, spreading its flames like a prairie fire on a windy day. A unified nationwide claims resolution process may be the only feasible alternative to the inferno.