Meteku Negatu v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

The Mortgage Industry in the United States is a ten trillion dollar enterprise. Sixty-five percent of homes in America are owned and carry mortgages. Since 2006, mortgage foreclosures have been on the rise. The District of Columbia is no different, posting more than 3,000 judicial foreclosure actions in 2016 and 2017 each year. Judicial foreclosures have dominated since April 2014 when the D.C. Superior Court created a special process for litigating foreclosure matters. Designed to emphasize mediation, the result has been a failure of Due Process and Equal Protection. Nearly all of the defendants are African American. At this writing, the undersigned is aware of just one mortgage foreclosure case that has gone to trial since the implementation of that special process. Many of these cases are dated and have not followed clear federal and local statutory requirements. Mortgagors, alleged to be in default, however, have been forced to accept the settlement terms of the Mortgagees or risk summary judgments. These summary judgments have been entered notwithstanding the fact that there are genuine issues of fact involved in these cases; notwithstanding the fact that courts in the two surrounding jurisdictions, Virginia and Maryland, have issued distinctly different rulings; and courts in other parts of Eastern United States, New York and New Jersey, have also issued distinctly different rulings. Courts throughout the Eastern Region have been thrown into conflict and confusion by the nonconformist stance of the D.C. Courts.