English and Blindness

            When it comes to something like home ownership, it is quite appropriate to require those who would disentitle a home purchaser to jump through all of the hoops, grab all of the rings, and steer the go-kart through all of the hairpin turns to show their clear entitlement to a foreclosure judgment before evicting the homeowner.  Once this is accomplished, however, the lenders are entitled to their remedies for defaulted loans.

            Like so many on Long Island and elsewhere, Maria Navarro found herself unable to pay the mortgage loan on her home, and, notwithstanding the recent tweaks to the statutes and the court rules to level the playing field between homeowner and mortgage holder, Maria has now gotten a judgment of foreclosure slapped upon her.

            Seems that Maria failed to answer the complaint filed in the court by Onewest Bank, the holder of the mortgage on her home.  She belatedly obtained counsel (smart money says assigned counsel, i.e., taxpayers' treat), who asserted that Maria should be given leave to file a late answer, which would interpose various defenses, including the argument that her default in answering the complaint was on account of her inability to read or write English when she .

            Judge Whelan wasn't eating any of that up.  Hizzoner reasoned that just as blind individuals are obligated to take reasonable efforts to obtain competent help in ascertaining the meaning of legal document that affect them, so, too, are those who are illiterate in English.

            [Onewest Bank v. Navarro, 2013 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 5656, 2013 NY Slip Op 52053(U)].

            One must wonder how Maria, with her handicapping inability to understand English, was able to find sufficient gainful employment to amass enough assets to be able to afford a home in the first place.

            Surely, the purveyor of the mortgage would have done a sufficient background check on Maria to ascertain and verify her earning capacity, and she never, ever would have been given a mortgage loan unless she had the demonstrated skills and acumen to obtain and maintain gainful employment.  And surely, her illiteracy in English would have prevented her from completing the loan application documents (Plural!  Very plural!).

            Mortgage lenders are very meticulous in making loans, so I really, really, cannot understand how she got the loan in the first place.

            [Oh, wait!  This blog posting needs a rework!   Never Mind!!!]