Mortgage Foreclosure & Refinance Resource

Kwaku Atta Poku, the Columbia cab owner who lost his family’s townhouse to foreclosure after a refinancing, despite having made every mortgage payment, is to get another chance to present his case today in Maryland’s highest court.
In arguments that could change how lower courts handle foreclosure cases, attorneys for the immigrant from Ghana are fighting to overturn rulings in favor of Washington Mutual Inc., the national mortgage company that took and resold his Howard County house in 2005.


Maryland law does not require a mortgage company to prove that a homeowner has been notified of a foreclosure and allows the taking of a house in a few weeks.

WaMu said it never received payment for the first mortgage, and Atta Poku was unable to prove it was paid off when he refinanced, partly because crucial financial documents were lost by the financial institutions involved in the transaction.

“I hope this [court hearing] will shed some light about the truth of this,” Atta Poku said.

Atta Poku’s lawyers want the high court to decide whether the Court of Special Appeals was right to dismiss his appeal because he couldn’t afford to file a bond, rather than consider the substance of his case. They are also seeking monetary damages in a separate action.

Despite reams of legal arguments filed weeks before the hearing, Scott C. Borison, the Frederick lawyer who will speak for Atta Poku, said oral arguments can be important.

“My role is to show why at this point, even if all the technicalities were right, [foreclosure] is wrong,” Borison said.

Phillip Robinson, executive director of Civil Justice Inc., a public-interest law firm, said there is more at stake than one man and his family.

“With Atta Poku’s case, they’ll [Court of Appeals] have an opportunity to reshape the Maryland foreclosure process.”
Robinson said more people are losing their homes to mortgage companies and banks, and the court can decide if Maryland’s foreclosure process “adequately meets various constitutional standards.” The decision could also have implications for reforms Gov. Martin O’Malley and the General Assembly plan to consider during the 90-day legislative session that starts in January.