Countrywide's Lawyers: "Don't Believe Countrywide's Commercials!

BB2: Unbelievable! Here's the summary: Couple see a commercial from Countrywide that they are willing to modify loans. They ask for a modification, are denied at the last minute, are foreclosed on, sue Countrywide, then are told in court by Countrywide's lawyers that the commercials were nothing more than "commercial puffery." Ridiculous!

From msnbc.com:

In marketing, advertising and testimony before Congress, Countrywide Home Loans has said repeatedly that it is working hard to modify the mortgages of financially strapped borrowers caught up in the subprime meltdown. But in a New Hampshire court, attorneys for the lending giant are singing a different tune, describing such assurances as “mere commercial puffery.”
Saying the modification offers are “only Countrywide’s vague advertisements,” attorneys for the lender are asking the court to throw out a lawsuit alleging breach of good faith, fraud, negligence and misrepresentation, which was filed on behalf of a family that was refused a loan modification by the California-based company.
“It’s breathtaking,” attorney Mary Frances Stewart of Concord, N.H., said of Countrywide’s response to the lawsuit she and co-counsel Krista Atwater filed in Merrimack County Superior Court. In its response, “Countrywide is saying, ‘We don’t have any obligation or even necessarily the intention of actually modifying these loans,’ and yet they’re representing that they do.”
The inability of many troubled borrowers to get viable modifications of mortgages they can no longer afford is seen by many economists as major impediment to a solution to the mortgage crisis, which is expected to result in more than 2 million home foreclosures this year.
The mortgage industry, eager to avoid legislation allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite home mortgages and to maintain the flow of taxpayer bailout funds, says it is working hard to modify as many loans as possible to help homeowners avoid that ruinous result.
But many attorneys representing troubled borrowers say those assurances are belied by the actions of lenders like Countrywide, which are really doing very little to help distressed borrowers stay in their homes.
The New Hampshire lawsuit casts that dispute in a new light, with attorneys representing the company echoing the arguments of Countrywide’s courtroom opponents.
Gary and Jessica Raymond are the plaintiffs in the suit, which seeks unspecified damages. The Raymonds say they lost the home of their dreams in Canterbury, N.H., after Countrywide strung them along for eight months in the belief their loans could be modified. They say the company then flatly rejected their efforts to negotiate an interest-rate cut.
“The one thing we wanted was to save the house,” Jessica Raymond, 30, told msnbc.com. “We never imagined … that we’d be sitting here in a lawsuit and talking to a reporter about it.”
No comment from CountrywideAn attorney with Goodwin Procter, the Boston law firm handling the case for Countrywide, referred inquiries to the financial company's public relations department, which did not reply to msnbc.com’s request for comment.
Representatives of the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group that counts Countrywide owner Bank of America among its members, did not respond to an e-mail request for comment on the lawsuit. But Scott Talbott, the group’s senior vice president for government affairs, told msnbc.com last week that “the industry is working very hard to work with homeowners to prevent delinquencies from becoming foreclosures. Nobody wins in a foreclosure.”
Countrywide Home Loans was a division of Countrywide Financial Corp., which in 2007 was the nation’s largest mortgage lender and serviced $1.4 trillion in loans. It was labeled “the company perhaps most responsible for the mortgage crisis” by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Waxman last year blasted the company’s executives for taking astronomical salaries and bonuses as Countrywide’s stock plummeted amid staggering losses from an orgy of subprime lending. The losses ultimately led to Countrywide’s sale last year to BofA. Meanwhile, attorneys general from states across the nation sued Countrywide over deceptive lending practices before 15 of them negotiated an $8.4 billion settlement on behalf of borrowers in the fall.
According to the Raymonds’ lawsuit, Countrywide was the loan servicer for the couple’s first mortgage and an equity line of credit that totaled a little over $230,000. Proceeds from the loans were used to purchase a new Cape Cod-style home on a quarter-acre lot in December 2004, and then finish the upstairs.