Posted on 08/28/2013 5:35:33 PM PDT by Morgana
LOGAN, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A woman is trying to put her life back together after returning home to an empty house.
Nikki Bailey got home from visiting her best friend in the hospital just in time to see the repossession company leaving.
“I was ready to rip out an IV and leave that hospital,” Pat Fot, Bailey’s best friend, said.
Fot knows Bailey makes her house payments.
“Everything was gone,” Bailey said. “Living room furniture, my Marshall diploma, my high school diploma, my pictures -- my history. I was teacher of the year. All of that stuff is gone -- certificates from that. It's all gone.”
As it turns out, the company had the wrong house.
The repossession company was told to remove everything from the house on Godby Heights in Logan. Bailey lives on Godby Street. Godby Heights is in Chapmanville.
“It just seems kind of ridiculous that this actually happened when a phone call could have stopped it,” Attorney Tim DiPiero said.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsaz.com ...
Out of control banks are one day going to meet an armed homeowner who is actually home when they hit the wrong house.
Things.
Punitive damages 25X or so would be a good place to start. If you repossess things, you should have a strict legal duty to ensure they are the RIGHT things.
Is everyone that stupid? Doesn’t anyone verify before they go stampeding into the property?
It happens enough that statutes need to be passed to criminalize this kind of negligence. A civil suit can never make full amends. This level of negligence needs to be a crime. Contact your state legislators.
see my tagline
That really sucks. Sue the dog poo out of them.
Malicious mischief. They didn't want the stuff, just wanted to stick it to someone. Wanted to make someone's life miserable. What terrible awful people.
Is there an incentive against it? If not, it will continue.
Re: your tag line.
There’s a thread here today about CEOs who make too much money. That doesn’t bother me.
What bothers me is when I read about a CEO who drives a company into the ground, is given $millions to leave. That crap has got to stop.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Probably won’t be the last. Wrong house repos are getting as bad as wrong house no-knock warrant searches.
I thought there were no more dumps, only transfer stations and recycling centers. Not sure about West Virginia. Haven’t been there lately. Likely they have something called the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Dump.
American Heritage Dictionary:
malicious mischief n. Willful or wanton destruction of another’s property.
Even if they’d done to the right person that’s what this was.
Company “Sorry about that” .....
Would someone please explain to me how this differs from anybody else breaking into her home and stealing her stuff? Why does the bank or repo company get away with this?
If I broke into her home and stole her stuff, I’d go to jail. As I should.
Would someone please explain to me how this differs from anybody else breaking into her home and stealing her stuff? Why does the bank or repo company get away with this?
If I broke into her home and stole her stuff, I’d go to jail. As I should.
Not defending the company’s actions here (they were reprehensible), but the fact that they “didn’t want the stuff” in the house is irrelevant. They weren’t there to repossss the contents of the house, they were there to repossess the house itself.
Again, they were reprehensible for not making damn sure they had the right house, but discarding stuff from the (correct) house is pretty standard practice in a foreclosure/eviction.
I worked for a “build on your lot” homebuilder back in the 80s. They had their own finance company and lots of times would “repo” houses if the property was in a location where they thought they couldn’t sell it.
One time the mortgage guy went to a house he was having repo’d and no one was there. He went one block over and the house movers were at the wrong house. They had all the utilities disconnected and the house up on wheels. He told them it was the wrong address so they set it back down on the blocks, re-connected the utilities then left. The homeowner never knew.
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