The Ninth Circuit held that a mortgage servicer that allegedly engaged in robo-signing may well have violated an Arizona statute, Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 33-420, that criminalizes filing false property title documents with the state recording offices. In re Mortg. Electronic Registrations Systems, Inc (Robinson v. Am. Home Mortg. Serv. Inc.), 2014 WL 2611314, 2 014 U.S. App. LEXIS 10934 (9th Cir. 2014). There was  evidence that trustee's sale documents were notarized in blank and...

The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has ruled that owners may make affirmative defenses to eviction claims by banks that acquired title to their property through a private or nonjudicial foreclosure. Bank of America v. Rosa, 466 Mass. 613 (2013). Those defenses may challenge the way in which the bank acquired title to the property through the foreclosure process and and power of the bank to foreclose in the first place. They may also include any equitable defenses...

The Texas Supreme Court held that a transfer of land to a city with an option to repurchase if the property were ever used for non-park purposes constituted a fee simple subject to condition subsequent and that the right of entry was a property right for purposes of the takings clause and compensable when then city failed to honor the condition. El Dorado Land Co., L.P. v. City of McKinney, 395 S.W.3d 798 (Tex. 2013). The deed provided that the conveyance was "subject to the requirement and restriction...

The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has reaffirmed the old rule that property rights can be expanded by slow accretion or diminished through slow erosion when property is located on a stream or the ocean. In White v. Hartigan, 982 N.E.2d 1115 (Mass. 2013), beachfront owners claimed a right to use the beach behind their neighbors house because their deed had given them rights to the beach in 1841. The court disagreed, noting that changing boundaries had...