Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself

Extreme economic problems require extreme solutions, and Wells Fargo Bank has come up with a good one. They have decided to sue themselves. Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium that is going into foreclosure. As holder of the first, they are suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is Wells Fargo. It gets better. The company has hired a lawyer to defend itself against its own lawsuit. The defense lawyer even filed this answer to the complaint, "Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage encumbering the subject real property. All other allegations of the complaint are denied." On the website The Consumer Warning Network, Angie Moreschi wrote: "We've apparently reached the perfect storm for complete and utter idiocy by some banks trying to foreclose on homes."

Comments

You can Do that?

[Monkeedude1212]

I'll See Me In court!!!

Re:You can Do that?

[Excelsior]

Recently, I called Wells Fargo and told them to "Go f*** yourselves"; I didn't anticipate they would take me so literally.

Re:You can Do that?

[Majik Sheff]

Wells Fargo has made so much money charging their customers fees (I think there might be a fee for fee processing) that they not only didn't need to take bailout money, they can afford to build a nice shiny corporate office with heated sidewalks. HEATED SIDEWALKS.

When I found out that my bank was being bought by Wells Feego I changed banks. When I went in to close the account, they asked why. When I told the teller it was because of the impending transfer she told me she was planning on quitting on the day of the changeover.

A good friend of mine worked in their credit card department for a very short while, he had to quit because he wasn't getting any sleep.

I hope W.F. sues itself into oblivion. This is one time I'll actually cheer for them to win a lawsuit. Let's go for quadruple damages while we're at it and see to it that the lawyers get an 80% fee on the proceeds.

Re:You can Do that?

[Dragonslicer]

they can afford to build a nice shiny corporate office with heated sidewalks.

Where's the office? If it's in the northeast or northern mid-west, heated sidewalks are a great idea, since they'd be much more reliable, be safer, and require less human work than having the grounds staff out there with salt, sand, and ice chippers (whether or not they're better environmentally than salt and sand would depend primarily on where the building gets its electricity from). My parents' house has a heater under the front stairs and porch to keep it free of ice in the winter, and I wish the university I went to could move around some of the underground steam pipes to help clear more of the sidewalks; it was funny seeing patches of bare sidewalk in the middle of the winter where the pipes went under them.

As for suing themselves and even hiring a lawyer to defend the lawsuit, well holy shit, that's hilarious.

Re:You can Do that?

[Mister Whirly]

Not as outrageous as Wells Fargo wanting the Minnesota Department of Transportation to build an exit ramp off Interstate 35W because their corporate offices are a whole 4 blocks away from the currently existing exit.

Re:You can Do that?

[R3d M3rcury]

While I'm not necessarily a fan of Wells Fargo, I gotta admit I'm finding this curious:

Wells Fargo has made so much money charging their customers fees (I think there might be a fee for fee processing) that they not only didn't need to take bailout money, they can afford to build a nice shiny corporate office with heated sidewalks.

Okay, let me get this straight. Because Wells Fargo made so much money--and doesn't appear to have lost too much money during the mortgage crisis or at least hasn't lost more money than they made--they didn't need to get bail-out money, saving taxpayers money. Perhaps this is in contrast with other banks that didn't charge fees and made poor choices during the mortgage crisis and needed bail-out money from the taxpayers.

Wells Fargo made lots of money by charging their customers for service, which is sort of the idea of a company which provides a service. You may argue the amounts, and I might agree with you. But they charged the amounts they charged and let the market decide whether they were worth it. You decided they weren't worth it and took your business elsewhere, which is your choice.

Tell me, did the bank you switched to need to take taxpayer money? Have they been absorbed by some other bank?

Re:You can Do that?

[AK Marc]

Wells Fargo is one of the most popular banks in Alaska (having bought out Bank of Alaska), and I think they use heated sidewalks in some locations. They are cheaper and safer than shoveling, and can be better for the environment than chemicals. They usually run off heated water from natural gas fired boilers, not electricity. But that may vary by location. We get more than 100 inches of snow a year in Anchorage.

Latest news

[Yvan256]

Sales of mattress have started picking up again.

Not if I see me first!

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just for this story we should be able to mod ourselves :)

Re:Not if I see me first!

[EvanED]

Yeah, but you'd immediately have to metamoderate your moderation down, so it works out in the end.

seriously?!

[evilkasper]

This sounds like something out of HitchHikers or a Python sketch.

Not only act of idiocy

[Coldeagle]

I'm currently in the process of purchasing a property owned by Wells Fargo, and I'm also using Wells Fargo for the mortgage. Honestly, I'm getting messages from the company that's servicing the property that the seller wants the deal closed as soon as possible, and that I need to pressure the lender! I mean honestly, this and the example listed here are a perfect example of how a bank can get so large that they can't even deal with themselves. Who would have thunk a fictitious person could develop schizophrenia!

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[scubamage]

If you think that is bad, I pray that you never have to deal with Verizon at a corporate level. So many divisions, and each one is run like its own company and is completely separated from the others. It's pathetic.

Congrats on the purchase, btw! :)

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[AndersOSU]

Too big to not fail?

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[autocracy]

That separation is government mandated anti-monopoly work stemming way back from Ma Bell time. The lender thing might be related to SEC rules. The lawsuit is just retarded. I hope the judge fines the plaintiff for wasting his time...

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[FiloEleven]

It's only confusing if you assume that corporations are one monolithic entity.

In fact, they're the exact opposite of a monolithic entity.

The monolith made our monkey ancestors more intelligent. Corporations are making us more stupidity again =(

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[AndersOSU]

I hope the judge fines the plaintiff and the defendant for wasting his time.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[radtea]

this and the example listed here are a perfect example of how a bank can get so large that they can't even deal with themselves.

It's not the size, it's the stupidity.

Everything I know about management I learned from the "telephone game" we played as kids, where you whisper a message around in a circle and find that after about three hops it gets completely mangled.

Stupid people ignore this phenomenon, and go through their lives acting as if telling someone something once is sufficient to get the message across. Stupid people run stupid organizations that radically under-communicate. Some people who are both stupid and evil use this to create private fiefdoms within organizations.

Smart people recognize this phenomena, and create organizations with multiple, redundant and simple lines of communication, and work to keep policies clear and concise so they are harder to mangle in the communications process.

Organizations run by stupid people are therefore extremely complex and hard to understand, whereas those run by smart people are generally simple. This leads stupid people--who are vastly in the majority--to think that organizations run by smart people aren't very capable, because they are too stupid to realize that capability comes with simplicity, not complexity.

Corporate America is hugely invested in the myth of complexity, and hires and trains managers accordingly. Attempts to simplify are fought at every turn. This creates the kind of environment where an organization can actively pursue and defend a lawsuit against itself, by itself, rather than carrying through the pro-forma motions required by law, because the people on both sides are too stupid to consider any other possibility.

And remember: this comes down to a couple of people. They are embedded within a large organization, but it is at the end of the day just them. It isn't like there are huge teams on this. An organization with clear lines of communication and responsibility would make it easy for the people in question to talk to each other, and the issue would be resolved. But that would be smart, and there is nothing smart about the people working for American banks these days.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[cob666]

In fact, they're the exact opposite of a monolithic entity.

The monolith made our monkey ancestors more intelligent. Corporations are making us more stupidity again =(

You might be confusing RL with Stargate a little bit.

You might be confusing Stargate with 2001: A Space Odyssey a little bit

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[Turken]

Well, the REALLY smart thing to do is live with a cheap old car as long as you possibly can while making payments into your own savings account towards a new car. Then buy the new car with cash and forget the bank financing entirely. Once the purchase is done, continue making payment towards the next new car. By deferring the first new car a couple years to begin with, you can put yourself in a positive cycle that will yield thousands in savings for years to come.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[Critical Facilities]

Something's not adding up in your story. First of all, (and I'll probably get modded into oblivion for this) it sounds like you bought a house you either couldn't afford or were unwilling to pay for. You calmly claim that you "fell behind" 3 months, were allowed to enter an agreement with the bank to fix that problem, and still complain that in 2 years they wanted their money with interest....the nerve!! Let's put the shoe on the other foot. If your employer stopped paying your check for 3 months, wouldn't you want your money back ASAP and with some interest?

I also do not understand how you were able to repay the 3 month's worth of mortgage owed, but were unable to come up with the interest on the delinquent charges. How is it that in 2 years and 3 months, you couldn't come up with the interest on the 3 month's payments?

Then, to top it off, you claim that your home was foreclosed on, you were refunded 1 year's worth of payments, and that the house was put on the market for 1 year's worth of house payments. I'm going to have to call B.S. on this one. I realize that we're in a "down market" as they call it, but trying to tell me that your home went back on the market for 1/30 of its original price is a little much.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[Bourbonium]

I have another horror story about Wells Fargo. I serve as treasurer for a non-profit organization which leased a high-speed multifunction copier/printer/scanner/fax machine in 2001 to print our newsletter. The lease was for five years and administered through Wells Fargo Financial Leasing. At the end of the five years, after paying thousands of dollars in lease payments at $300/month, they told us that to close the lease, we could either purchase the machine outright for $360, or pay $500 to have it shipped to a recycling/salvage facility in Texarkana, Arkansas. The non-profit, of course, decided to pay the $360 and contract with a local printer company to service the machine, which still worked well, even though it was no longer under warranty.

Everything seemed fine until Wells Fargo started sending us bills about six months later. Since the lease had ended and the non-profit owned the machine, I ignored the bills and just threw them away. Then I got a call from Wells Fargo demanding another paymnet of $249, saying the account was never closed and the $249 represented accrued interest. I faxed Wells Fargo all the paperwork and copies of the cancelled checks to prove that the lease had ended and that we owned the machine outright. I even used the very same multifunction machine in question to fax the paperwork back to them.

Wells Fargo insisted that the money was still owed, and continued to send invoices and made threatening phone calls. They finally turned it over to a collection agency, which made more threatening phone calls. Not wishing to harm our credit standing, I asked the board of the non-profit for authorization to pay the bogus bill and they agreed just so we could close the matter.

Then, six months later, we received a refund check from Wells Fargo for $95. Wells Fargo apparently figured out they over-charged us for some reason, but there was no explanation for the refund check nor any detailed accounting of what was being refunded or why. It was just an envelope with a check enclosed.

The board of the non-profit has now passed a resolution that we will never do any business with Wells Fargo ever again, nor will we maintain a bank account with Bank of America or any other bank that accepted TARP funds. My current task as treasurer is to move all our money out of BofA (which has been our bank since the organization was founded in 1974) and into a different bank that has not taken any taxpayer bailout money. Believe it or not, there still are a few around (e.g., Union Bank, USBank, Mechanics Bank and Pacific National Bank are four that we are considering).

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[AK Marc]

Actually, it is the law. Wells Fargo is required by law to sue itself. It must file suit to forclose. It must file suit against all leinholders to clear the title. It can't do it any other way. It can't hire one firm to represent both sides, even if both sides are the same company because that's a conflict of interest, and we are have adversarial court system. And so it's in the interest of both firms to stretch out the legal proceedings to increase billing, again a legal thing. Wells Fargo is caught in the middle of bad laws written by lawyers and enforced by lawyers. And the only way out is to sue themselves. And somehow that's because the government is issuing bailouts? Wells Fargo is one of the most successful in this time. They aren't on the brink of failing, they are one buying up other institutions at fire sale prices. But bad laws and stupid Internet armchair quarterbacks make for good news. And that's what it really is about. Blaming everyone else and pointing out the stupid things, when the real problem is the voters who pick from Kang and Kodos and think there is a difference when all of them spend more than we take in on projects most people don't want. The only difference is what projects that shouldn't exist get funded these 8 years or those 4 years or whatever.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[AK Marc]

Wells Fargo is required by law to sue the other leinholders in order to clear the title. There is no way, other than court order (which requires a lawsuit) to get a name removed for a clear title. Even when they are the same entity.

Re:Not only act of idiocy

[iamhassi]

"Something's not adding up in your story."

I completely agree! The whole thing never made sense to me either

"How is it that in 2 years and 3 months, you couldn't come up with the interest on the 3 month's payments?"

I don't recall explaining how Wells Fargo calculated interest, so how would you know if it made sense or not?

" you were refunded 1 year's worth of payments, and that the house was put on the market for 1 year's worth of house payments. I'm going to have to call B.S. on this one."

Like I said, I don't understand it either.

"home went back on the market for 1/30 of its original price is a little much."

wait... what? Do you think they take the value of your house, divide it by 30 years, and that's what they charge you per year? Wow that'd be great, wouldn't it? So a $300,000 house divided by 30 would be 10 grand a year, or a $833/mo payment. Everyone would own million dollar houses.

crazy?

[pak9rabid]

Under normal circumstances I'd say this is completely wacked...but in legal land I guess it's just business as usual.

Suing yourself is collusive litigation.

[MarkvW]

Suing yourself is collusive litigation. We pay taxes to support the legal system and it is outrageous for a corporation to abuse the already overburdened judicial system resolving disputes that are not really disputes.

There must be more to this story, though. Maybe it's Wells Fargo Holding Co., Inc. versus Wells Fargo Partners, Inc. That would make sense.

Re:Suing yourself is collusive litigation.

[Anonymusing]

From the article: ...court documents clearly label "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as the plaintiff and "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as a defendant.

Aren't they supposed to spontaneously self-destruct when this happens?

Re:Suing yourself is collusive litigation.

[gd2shoe]

I'm surprised the Judge hasn't called in both attorneys and chewed them out. They clearly deserve it.

Re:Suing yourself is collusive litigation.

[cbiltcliffe]

The judge is probably a Monty Python fan, and he's going to let the whole trial go through.

Then, at the end, he's going to say:

"I'm ruling against Wells Fargo, and in favour of Wells Fargo."

Then, promptly get up from the bench, and return to his chamber, all the while laughing at the sound of lawyer's heads exploding in the courtroom.

Re:Suing yourself is collusive litigation.

[tnk1]

"To make this easier, the Court has decided to give code names to the two sides in the litigation. Let the record show that the Plaintiff, Wells Fargo Bank NA, will henceforth be known as Fucktard, and the Defendant, Wells Fargo NA, will be known as Asshat. The counselors are instructed to refer to their clients by the names given by the Court in order to clarify the record. Failure to do so will result in a contempt citation.

Please proceed with your opening arguments, Fucktard."

It's a wash.

[Queltor]

Wells Fargo better make sure the loser reimburses the winner's legal expenses!

Since the lawsuit was filed in Florida ...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

why not increase the strangeness and have Wells Fargo hire Jack Thompson to represent one of the sides?

...

...

Oh, right.

Re:Since the lawsuit was filed in Florida ...

[MyLongNickName]

Why not hire him for both sides and let him have the experience of actually winning a case?

Re:Since the lawsuit was filed in Florida ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He'd be the only one who could pull off making the case even more strange by causing both sides to lose.

Coke did this

[travdaddy]

I remember a similar case when Coke sued Coke Zero. It was all over TV a couple years ago.

Re:Coke did this

[deanoaz]

Except that was a humorous Coke Zero ad campaign about how utterly stupid it would be if Coke sued itself. Wells Fargo is actually doing it.

Re:Coke did this

[SomeJoel]

You know, the joke was funny enough without you having to explain it.

Why Hire Another Lawyer?

[Greyfox]

They could save a crap ton of money if they used the same guy to both prosecute and defend the case!

Schrodinger's Bank

[XiX36]

They will exist in both a state of winning and losing this case regardless of the outcome. Cool! I would ask why this stupidity is allowed to continue but then I remember that people like this thought credit default swaps were a pretty neat idea. . .

Re:Schrodinger's Bank

[Culture20]

Message to all other creditors of Wells Fargo: "Sorry, we owe this money to our #1 creditor, Wells Fargo, due to the outcome of this lawsuit. You can't have any."

Florida requires it?!

[bidule]

I RTFA, and it appears that Florida requires that you sue all lien holders. Since they have 80/20 double mortgage, they have to sue themselves.

Re:Florida requires it?!

[jfengel]

Thanks for RTFA. I find that most of the time stories about "How incredibly stupid is this?" are often leaving out some crucial fact.

Re:Florida requires it?!

[BradleyAndersen]

While it may seem stupid (and I agree with you, it does), it is apparently necessary for the particular suit to go forward, as GGP says. Usually, I would say this means the law needs to be changed; however, this law actually makes sense. This just happens to be a really strange application of that law.

Re:Florida requires it?!

[diamondsw]

And required by Florida law. If they did not, the foreclosure would be vacated.

As usual, it all comes back to Florida.

And the winner is...

[freejung]

The lawyers!

It actually makes a perverse kind of sense though. Banks can effectively lend money to themselves, so they should be able to sue themselves too!

Eh

[BSDevil]

It's actually more common than you'd think. The meat of the story is really this line:

As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself.

Wells Fargo (holder of the senior mortgage) is trying to clear out all the subsidiary mortgage interests so that it can sell the property. In the process of doing so, it has to sue itself for record-keeping purposes - if I'm going to buy some property, I want a clear case record showing that all existing claims have been discharged. What will likely happen, however, is that junior Wells Fargo will settle with senior Wells Fargo, after doing some filings to show that it's done it's due dilligence in trying to protect it's fiduciary interest in the property.

Re:Eh

[castironpigeon]

It's not Wells Fargo we ought to be upset at, it's the legal system that's so borked it requires a company to sue itself. Can we burn the law books yet and just govern ourselves by common sense?

Re:Eh

[Todd Knarr]

They could, except that then other lienholders could scream "Preferential treatment!" and delay things or force Wells Fargo to give them preferential treatment too. Remember that if WF succeeds in this action, all those other subsidiary lienholders will end up holding worthless paper, and WF doesn't want to give them anything they can use against WF. If WF treats itself exactly the way it treats the others and follows exactly the same procedures, that takes away one thing those other lienholders can use to try and derail the proceeding.

Stupidity countdown

[bperkins]

By my count, the bank is only the fifth stupidest here.
Let's count it down:

5) Wells Fargo

For getting itself in the position of having to sue itself

4) Florida State government

For writing a law that requires a bank to sue itself.

3) Al Lewis/Fox News

For writing/publishing this worthless article.

2) samzenpus

For posting this on slashdot.

1) Me

For commenting on this crap.

But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and pile scorn on the banks.

It'll take your mind off the fact that you're the real sucker.

Get in line

[Jeremy Erwin]

Seems like a clear case of "heads, we win, tails, you lose". This lawsuit ensures that one part of wells fargo gets the proceeds of any auction or resale, and what's left over after satisfying the original note (yeah right)/ will still go to the other part of wells fargo. Maybe the 80% note is subordinate to the 20% note?

Crazy like a fox

[russotto]

From another article on the same subject http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php?action=printpage;topic=48933.0

Attorney McKillop explains that to avoid suing itself a lender would typically release the lien against the property after the foreclosure goes through. By suing itself, the company avoids the step of having to file that additional paperwork. That, in effect, speeds up the time it takes to sell the property after foreclosing.

(McKillop represents the real defendant, the homeowner).

Seems like this is just a procedural trick to get the second lien dismissed during the original foreclosure case. Apparently Wells Fargo thinks it's worth paying an extra lawyer rather than having to wait for the voluntary release of the lien to go through. Pretty silly, but it is _Florida_ law at issue, after all...

Advice from the past

[ellbee]

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". - (Henry VI Act IV, Scene II - Shakespeare, ca. 1623). Good idea then, good idea now.

Noooo!! Tag article as LOOPBACK

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just sad.

No, no, NO! You don't understand. This is a case of corporate autoimmune disease (think rheumatoid arthritis)...or management has unlocked the mysteries of 127.0.0.1 .
 
Yep, that's gotta be it. Loopback.

Re:In all actual seriousness...

[harpune]

You can at least remove yourself from the whims of some of these corporations. Find yourself a local credit union, and put your money there. They're not perfect, and they don't have all the fancy 'Get an iPod when you open a credit line' deals, but a stable place to keep your money, that is more or less customer-owned, should outweigh those gimmicks. I haven't looked back since I opened an account at a CU after WaMu went down.