Success Following Trial And Appeal Of Contested Foreclosure, Including Defense Of Constructive Fraud and Bad Faith Claims
May 05, 2017
In February 2016, my partner Matt Millis and I tried a contested commercial foreclosure case. Following the four-day trial, the court entered judgment in our clients’ favor. Click here to see the judgment. The trial mainly was about the borrower’s counterclaims against our clients, an originator of hard-money commercial mortgage loans and the company that funds the loans, as well as the borrower’s defenses to the foreclosure.
The borrower appealed. Yesterday, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment. Here is the opinion. The Court’s opinion summarizes some of the key facts and, of note, addresses two of the borrower’s defenses: (1) that our clients breached a “duty to speak,” which arose out of the borrower’s allegations of constructive fraud, and (2) that our clients violated the “Hamlin Doctrine,” which dealt with the borrower’s assertion that our clients breached a duty to act in good faith.
The Court of Appeals decided that our clients did not breach any alleged duty to speak about certain loan-to-value requirements for the deal. In other words, the Court found that the judgment was supported by the findings of fact (the evidence at trial) and was not clearly erroneous. In addition, the Court held that the trial court’s findings of fact supported the conclusion that our clients did not act in bad faith with respect to the fulfillment of a broker’s price opinion contingency. For more about the case, please read the trial court’s judgment and the appellate court's memorandum decision – links above.
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I frequently represent lenders, as well as their mortgage loan servicers, in connection with contested mortgage foreclosure actions. If you need assistance with a similar matter, please call me at 317-639-6151 or email me at john.waller@woodenmclaughlin.com. You may also follow me on Twitter @JohnDWaller or on LinkedIn, or you can subscribe to my blog posts via RSS or email as noted on my home page.