A U.S. District judge let stand a lawsuit which accuses JPMorgan Chase & Co. of misleading thousands of cash-strapped homeowners nationwide over mortgage modifications.
Judge Richard Stearns also will allow homeowners to move ahead with claims that the nation’s largest U.S. bank failed to keep their end of the bargain, after signing up borrowers in the hopes that their mortgages would be modified under the Home Affordable Modification Program or HAMP, reuters.com reported.
Homeowners claim that Morgan’s Chase unit drove them deeper into debt by prolonging the modification progress through “gross ineptitude,” sometimes adding fees to loans already in default and starting foreclosures while modifications were being negotiated.
“(Some plaintiffs) allege that they would have fared better economically had their homes been foreclosed by Chase at the outset instead of at the end of a drawn-out and ultimately futile modification process that Chase had no real intention of honoring,” Stearns wrote. “These are, of course, allegations — but for present purposes, the court must credit them.”
