A Texas City woman skipped out of the courtroom Tuesday after winning a verdict of about $12 million from the Florida bank that jurors found defrauded her of her home.
The 212th State District Court jury spent a day deliberating Sealy Davis' case against Ocwen Federal Bank.
In Davis took out a $31,000 home equity loan on the house she had lived in for 60 years. A year later, after missing a payment while hospitalized, Davis contacted Ocwen, whose representatives told her she could make up the missed payment on a payment plan.
However, Davis' lawyers argued that Ocwen not only failed to put her on a plan, but the company also failed to credit her for money she had sent for the missed payment.
Ultimately, Ocwen acted on the missed payment, citing it as justification for foreclosing on Davis' home, a move that forced her into Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Among the witnesses in the trial was a former Ocwen employee, who testified that the company offered loan collectors cash bonuses for foreclosing on properties with equity.
By a 10-2 margin, the jury found Ocwen had intentionally misled Davis by moving to foreclose on her home while telling her they were working out a payment system.
The case began Nov. 14, but only after a federal appeals court quashed a lower federal court's injunction that would have kept the trial from proceeding. The defendants had argued that the state trial would impair the fairness of a similar case in a federal court in Illinois. Both the federal court ruling and the federal appeals court's overturning of the ruling came Nov. 10.
To minimize the case backlog the lengthy case would cause, State District Court Judge Susan Criss ordered her criminal trial period to begin as scheduled Monday, after jurors in the civil trial began deliberating the case. The judge briefly recessed the assault-on-a-public-servant trial over which she was presiding, when the jury notified her Tuesday that it had reached a verdict.
The lawsuit also named a bank and a law firm working with Ocwen as defendants, but the jury found Ocwen solely responsible for misleading Davis and misrepresenting her debt.
The case involved a battery of attorneys on each side. Corpus Christi lawyer Robert Hilliard, lead counsel in the Davis case, represents more than 100 other homeowners with similar claims pending against Ocwen.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Contact who ever you need, to keep this ball rolling. Now is the time to fight for your rights. Thank you...
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