Property Law Developments—Joseph William Singer

A federal District Court judge in Massachusetts has ruled in the case of Dixon v. Wells Fargo Bank, 2011 WL 2945795 (D. Mass. 2011), that a ban cannot induce a homeowner to stop making mortgage payments as a prerequisite to negotiations to modify the mortgage and then use that failure to make the mortgage payments as a predicate for foreclosing on the property and evicting the owner. The bank’s representation that it would renegotiate following the borrower’s cessation of mortgage payments constituted a promise on which the borrower reasonably relied and that promise could be equitably enforced by denying the bank the right to foreclose in the circumstances. The court did not find a promise by the bank to modify the mortgage but it did have a duty to negotiate the modification in good faith before foreclosing.