The government has been backing up to the back doors of these institutions, unloading truckloads of cash. Many have used the funds to purchase other banks or shore up their balance sheets; few have passed any relief to their customers. The backlash against them has primarily been debt repudiation (bankruptcy and foreclosure) and now, debt cancellation.
Spinner excoriated OneWest for repeatedly refusing to work out a deal, for misleading him about the dollar amounts at stake in the case, and for its treatment of the couple over months of hearings.
OneWest’s conduct was “inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious,” Spinner wrote.
He canceled the debt because the bank “must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse against [the couple].”
The bank is involved in a similar case in California, where it’s trying to foreclose on an 89-year-old woman, despite two court orders telling it to stop.
Dispatches From The Front 