Mortgage fraud victory
Woman wins back home as court reverses decision
Excerpt from an article by Dale Anne Freed - Toronto Star
She was David pitted against Goliath, an embattled Toronto widow who took on the system and won.
Susan Lawrence won back her 100-year-old home, stolen from her on paper by identity fraudsters, when the province’s highest court, in a rare move, reversed its own decision on a previous mortgage fraud.
“This is a victory for every person who owns property in Ontario,” an ecstatic Lawrence, 55, told the Star yesterday from her west-end home.
Lawrence, who works in sales, received an eviction notice from Maple Trust Co. last March at the two-storey Victorian house she had lived in for 28 years. But she was never forced to leave.
“In this particular case, I think common sense has prevailed,” she said.
An impostor posing as Susan Lawrence transferred the home to another impostor calling himself Thomas Wright, who in turned obtained a $291,924 mortgage from Maple Trust. The property ownership was transferred to Wright, and Maple Trust registered its mortgage against the property.
Yesterday, a panel of five judges in the Court of Appeal released a unanimous decision favouring the victimized homeowner and ordering Maple Trust to pay $25,000 toward her legal costs.
Justice Eileen Gillese summarized the case and her judgment in a nutshell: “Ownership of a person’s home is fraudulently transferred. The property is then mortgaged. In a contest between the two innocent parties – the homeowner and the lender of the mortgage monies – who wins? This appeal answers that question in favour of the homeowner.”
“The case is really the end of Susan’s fight – that she and innocent homeowners should not be responsible for mortgage fraud,” her lawyer, Morris Cooper said.
Lawrence had asked the court to reverse itself on the decision it made in the 2005 “Household Realty” case awarding rights to the mortgage company, which set the precedent for her legal predicament.
The publicity surrounding Lawrence’s case “created a perfect storm of public opinion that resulted ultimately in the Legislature of Ontario amending the law last fall,” Cooper said.
After media attention raised public ire about people victimized in similar ways, the province entered the fray, intervening to support Lawrence’s bid to get the decision overturned.
And it backed that up by amending Ontario’s Land Titles Act to clarify its intent, Government Services Minister Gerry Phillips said. “I’m pleased that the court confirmed our view that homeowners should not be subject to fraudulently obtained mortgages.”
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