Legal News

Former Ohio AG Marc Dann Reprising Mortgage Cop Role

By Amir Efrati

When we last brought you word of Marc Dann, he was resigning as Ohio’s attorney general amid a sexual harrassment scandal.

Where is he now? Turns out the former “Mortgage Cop,” as he was dubbed in this 2007 WSJ profile, is back on the beat. What’s more, he hooked up with Cleveland activist Richard Davet, the pro se litigant whose 11-year foreclosure battle is the subject of this WSJ Page One story. (For prior LB posts on Davet click here and here.)

Dann is trying to help Davet take back ownership of his six-bedroom home in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood, from which he was evicted more than two years ago. Davet’s longtime argument: Because his mortgage company, now part of Bank of America, didn't actually own his loan until three years after the company initiated foreclosure proceedings against him in 1996, it didn't have standing to come before the court as the plaintiff. BofA has said the state and district courts' decisions affirmed the company's right to foreclose.

Davet’s original argument was prescient. During the current foreclosure crisis, some Ohio courts have adopted his logic–that plaintiffs can’t bring a foreclosure action unless they own the mortgage. (For LB coverage on how the frenzied pace of foreclosure filings has led some judges to push back against mortgage companies, click here, here and here.)

As a pro se litigant, Davet held off foreclosure for 11 years but eventually lost. On July 2, Dann helped Davet file this complaint against the owners of Davet’s former home (pictured, right), saying they entered the home “in reliance on a void ab initio judgment of foreclosure.” Translation: the Ohio state court that ruled in favor of foreclosure had no standing to hear the case.

The defendant in Davet’s suit, Paul Mikhli, a dentist who bought Davet’s home, once told the Law Blog he was “a little nervous” about the nonstop litigation over the house. Should Mr. Davet succeed, Mikhli told us, title insurance should cover his expenses.

Though perhaps a longshot, a Davet victory might also have implications for other home owners facing foreclosure. As Dann told the Law Blog, “There are thousands of Ohioans whose home and life savings were lost when a foreclosure action was filed, and they didn't have legal sophistication to defend and litigate it, to determine that the people bringing the action didn't have proper title.”

Dann, who now operates a solo firm in Cleveland, mostly does legal work for unions but also has four pro bono foreclosure-defense cases. He wouldn’t say whether Davet’s case is one of those four, but he did say the case is Property Law 101: “When a court doesn’t have jurisdiction, there can be no judgment.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 06, 2009 (boomark / email).