Miss Magoo:
adjuster jack: Easy. Banks are monumental bureaucracies that are segmented into hundreds of departments where millions of items of communications flow between the departments. Not hard to imagine a colossal screwup that caused the foreclosure followed by a colossal screwup that resulted in ignoring the judgment.
Wow! Hearing it put that way, I am actually quite surprised it doesn't happen more often then...
Jack makes it sound more chaotic at banks than it really is. However, in any organization, things can get overlooked or screwed, more so in bigger organizations in which functions are much more divided and policies more regimented. Still, most banks, and especially the big ones, didn't get where they are by being incompetent and letting all sorts of things get out of control. They do have good control systems and don't miss all that much.
Mistakes happen, though, and folks who pay attention to details can profit from them. Some years ago, when I was with the IRS, I once had to collect over $100k in income tax owed by a couple who owned two homes in the same county. One was their residence, the other a rental. The same big bank granted the mortgages on both properties. I pulled the mortgage documents for both from the deed records office. While the address shown on each mortgage was correct, I realized that both mortgages had the exact same property description. Whoever prepared the mortgage document was using the wrong deed to get the the property description from. The effect under that state's case law was that the bank had two mortgages on the residence for far more than that one was worth, and the rental was unencumbered.
I threatened to seize and sell the rental to get the taxes paid. The bank's lawyers insisted that the address was enough to encumber the property. I pointed out the case law against the bank and asked if the bank was willing to litigate the point in federal court against the U.S. government. The bank blinked, loaned the couple the money to pay the tax lien, and then refinanced both properties in wrap around mortgages to account for all the loans made, taking extra special care the second time around to get the property descriptions correct.
Had I not taken the time to carefully read the property descriptions and had instead relied just on the addresses shown, I'd have missed an important opportunity for the government. This reinforces was good lawyers know: never assume anything and always verify everything. As I've said on these boards often, the details really do matter.
