"Suit blames loan servicer for pending foreclosure" by Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff | August 5, 2008
A Boston-area couple who are in foreclosure, despite their herculean attempts to prevent it, have filed a lawsuit against Washington Mutual, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicing firms.
In the suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Lori and Mark Pestana of Westford allege the loan servicer was unresponsive to their repeated phone calls and to their applications to negotiate an arrangement that would have allowed them keep their house out of foreclosure.
The suit is seeking class-action status on behalf of thousands of Washington Mutual borrowers in Massachusetts. Their allegations echo those of other borrowers who dealt with customer service departments at major loan servicing firms. Loan servicing firms accept payments and handle mortgage duties on behalf of lenders or the Wall Street investors who hold the loans.
The firms, inundated with loan delinquencies and foreclosures, often don't respond to phone calls or letters and fail to accept late payments, renegotiate loans, or approve house sales that would avert foreclosures, some borrowers and agents have said.
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