Jury Awards $250,000 to Family against Wells Fargo

Attorneys Johnny Ellis and Bobby Lewis represented the plaintiff family and stopped the foreslosure. Three day trial results in Jury verdict that Wells Fargo breached the contract with the plaintiffs. "Suspense" account was a key issue at trial.

After the trial, attorney Ellis explained, “My clients offered to settle for less but the bank refused. The jury agreed that the bank breached the contract. My clients have rights under the contract too. I'm glad the jury didn't let a big company get away with what they did.”

Click here to read the judgement.

Appeal

WELLS FARGO hired Senator Howard Baker’s law firm to appeal the verdict against them; argument at the Court of Appeals set for May 15, 2008.

“Wells Fargo has hired one of the most powerful law firms in the country to try and foreclose on my client’s house,” said Plaintiff’s Attorney Johnny Ellis. “They will spend thousands of dollars rather than admit that they made an error. All my clients wanted to do was pay their mortgage on time and they signed up for automatic payment. Wells Fargo drafted $970 dollars from their account but never applied it to the mortgage. Next, they froze the money in their account and would not let them use it to make pay their payment! I am proud to be representing these clients against such reprehensible practices.”

Click here to read the Complaint

Wells Fargo Bank services over 4 million mortgage accounts every month.

Court Of Appeals Rules WELLS FARGO Must Pay

August 25, 2008

The Tennessee Court of Appeals issued its opinion today that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Inc. was guilty of violating the terms of the contracts between Wells Fargo, and the plaintiff homeowners, John and Angela Filson. The thirteen page opinion recounts the horror story of the strong arm methods used by Wells Fargo to harass and intimidate the Filsons.

“I think that their plan was to ruin the Filsons’ credit so that they could charge them a higher interest rate on a re-finance," said the Filson's attorney. Johnny Ellis. "We have all seen the irresponsible behavior of banks and mortgage companies in the past few months, this was just one example. This is one of the first wrongful foreclosure cases in Tennessee. The bank took this too far and my clients were one of the few that refused to be pushed around,”

The court remanded the case back to the trial court for more proof of damages. “The court has given us the rare opportunity to increase our damages,” Ellis continued, “There was a lot of contract damages proof we left out at trial. I felt that the strength of the case was in the emotional distress and outrageous conduct claims. Conservatively, we should be able to show about $200,000 to $300,000 in contract damages. Between the illegal interest on the loan, lost income, and attorney’s fees we should be at about $225,000.”

Ellis went on to say that he gets about three calls or e-mails per week from total strangers about this case, and is considering filing for “class status” when he gets the next Tennessee plaintiff with good proof of their facts. “I can't stress it enough, we won this case because Mr. Filson had documented his conversations and activities with this predator. Anyone who plans to take on a company with over $3 billion in profits, and 7 million mortgage customers needs good records, and to be ready to fight.”

Click here to read the court opinion