The case is also instructive in that it repeats a very common scenario regarding the origination and progression of the loan. This court and other courts will eventually face the day when their assertions come full circle: for now, they are saying that just because there was no consideration between then named lender and the borrower doesn’t mean there was no enforceable contract.

Yes it does mean that in every context other than foreclosure litigation. But because of the rules in UCC Article 3 the maker of a note takes a risk when they execute the promissory note without having received any consideration because the note represents, under law, the right to enforce it, which if it is acquired for value might mean the enforcement would be free from borrower”s defenses. That liability does not create an enforceable loan contract. Even common sense dictates that for a loan contract to be enforceable there must be a loan between the parties to the contract.

PRACTICE NOTE: All that said, this case only stands for the proposition that a complaint is sufficient when it pleads that the party on whose behalf an assignment was made had no ownership in the debt. The proof of the pudding will be at trial. How will you prove this basic proposition. The answer is that you have taken the first step which is that you put the matter in issue. The second step is discovery. And the third step, if it ever gets to that, is establishing at trial that the supposed beneficiary under a deed of trust or the mortgagee under a mortgage deed had not satisfied its burden of proof showing an ownership interest in the underlying debt.”

The opposition to that narrative will be what it has always been. That possession of the “original” note raises the legal presumption that the named beneficiary under the deed of trust in fact was the legal beneficiary under the deed of trust. Possession of the note, they will argue equals ownership of the debt. If the judge accepts that proposition, the burden of proof will then fall on the borrower to rebut that presumption — a leap that most judges have already demonstrated they don’t want to make. So the persuasiveness of then presentation including an unrelenting march toward revelation of the truth is the only thing that carries the day.

The banks know that what they’re doing is wrong. But history shows that they can get away with it except with the apparently rare homeowner who aggressively and relentlessly defends the foreclosure.