As California Monitor, my staff and I fielded tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, questions from homeowners. The hardest conversations were the easiest from a legal perspective. If someone's home was foreclosed in California, we advised there was little, if any, likely recourse. The California Homeowner Bill of Rights created a new remedy for consumers, but for homeowners before its January 2013 effective date, the options were nearly nil.

The California Supreme Court, in a decision that surprised many, staked out a clear right for homeowners to contest in court whether the foreclosing party had proper rights in the mortgage to allow it to foreclose. In Yvanova v. New Century Mortgage Corp, the court reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded to allow the plaintiff to present her action alleging wrongful foreclosure. The court was careful to stay away from the merits, making no ruling on whether the plaintiff could prove the assignment was void. But, I this the court engaged in a bit of chicanery in declaring that its "ruling in this case is a narrow one." Yvanova is a big change from the developing body of lower court cases in California denying a borrower standing to file a claim based on violations of the the terms of a pooling and servicing agreement. 

The LA Times story identifies a number of open questions that must be answered to know if any homeowners will actually win damages in wrongful foreclosure cases based on pre-Homeowner Bill of Rights' actions. For one thing, the statute of limitations for wrongful foreclosure is uncertain in California–partly because the state has had so few cases. While I think the court is correct on the law in Yvanova, the wheels of justice may have turned too slowly to help people. As a case study, the opinion may best be used as evidence of the importance of faster, legislative remedies for consumers such as the Homeowner Bill of Rights over developing the common law. The opinion is well-done, however, and merits a read, particularly for its quotation from the Miller opinion: "Banks are neither private attorneys general nor bounty hunters, armed with a roving commission to seek out defaulting homeowners and take away their homes in satisfaction of some other bank's deed of trust."