From the WTF? Files: Wells Fargo sues… Wells Fargo

As a real estate broker, I deal with lenders on a regular basis. Some of them drive me insane. They do things like take 12 weeks to decline a short sale offer of $245K, only to foreclose on the home and list it for sale at $190K.

My grad school finance course didn’t cover this sort of thought process.

The latest in “What the hell are they possibly thinking?” comes from Wells Fargo, a lending institution we’ve dealt with many times and have had experiences ranging from barely acceptable to utterly ridiculous.

But this has got to top the list of “Idiotic Things a Bank Has Done” – which is not exactly a short list.

My friend Mariana Wagner of the fabulous blog, Colorado Springs Real Estate Connection, tipped me an article from Al Lewis at Fox Business, Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself.

Yes, you read that correctly. Wells Fargo is suing itself.

Why they’ve even hired one set of attorneys to represent them and another law firm to defend them. Against themselves.

It’s mind-boggling.

The best line in the article is the conclusion:

It takes some pretty shameless lawyers and a rich culture of corporate stupidity for a company to sue itself. I hope Wells Fargo loses this case and ends up having to drag itself all the way to the Supreme Court.

No kidding.

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deanouellette

Yup this is why i included this in top 5 today, the only thing about this that didnt make me shake my head was it was Wells Fargo doing it

acadapter

I will agree with " deanouellette "

ksandridge

Oh man, this one takes the cake! Canibalization at its finest! Thanks for the heads up, Jay. Will be sharing this with folks via Twitter for sure!

mattdenverluxuryrealestate

That is hi-larious. The sad part is that probably no one is surprised...

JoeLoomer

Maybe Sotomayor will rule in their favor....

BeeRealty

Hmmm...... Thinking here.... If I sue myself... can I get some money some how? Might be worth a try.

Oh wait, I don't have taxpayers subsidizing my biz, so there isn't anything to get. Dang.

LOL. Frickin' crazy. At all of our expense....

JimDuncan

And one wonders how and why banks and the economy are where they are today. Morons.

M Realty

Absolutely hilarious. This is just a huge waste of their own time and money. Its pretty sad how many jobs there are for lawyers out there, and with ridiculous cases like this, we will need to hire more judges and lawyers to keep up with the paperwork hamster wheel.

-Tyler

two_vees

I am a WF client. It amazes me that I have a mortgage, savings account and checking account with them. Through Bill Pay, it takes 5 days to pay between these accounts. I can pay other vendors, like SRP, GMAC, in 2 days. That is efficiency!

Tina Fountain

Look at it this way, at least they can't lose!

Jay Thompson

Or, they can't win.... ;)

minnesotarealestateguy

Really this doesn't shock me at all. If you have ever dealt with one of these corporate banks you can't help but deal with their systematic incompetence. I'm wating on one short sale for four months now through one of their major competitors. They have done so many things that makes no sense at all.

DougFrancis

This sounds like something cooked up over a couple of drinks after work on the back of a cocktail napkin. Maybe it's part of the "Florida Attorneys Full-Employment Program".

stevetrang

It's about time that Wells Fargo stood up to Wells Fargo. This has been a long time coming. Does anybody else feel that our society's race to stupidity has accelerated to warp speed?

Dan@ Best Home Pix

You mean it will no longer take us 500 years to reach the level of the stupidity hypothesized in the movie 'Idiocracy'?

jmchood

I can only hope that the young-up-and-coming-legal-beagle at WF who though this would be a good idea either gets:

1. Fired
2. Promoted

Long live Corporate America and the insanity it breeds.

jasonsandquist

More from the Wells Fargo WTF files: Client wanted to write an offer on a property only to find out that Wells Fargo foreclosed the home wrong way and had to re-foreclose on it!?! Needless to say they decided to move on. Wells Fargo has been screwing a lot of transactions up lately... doesn't surprise me.

Candy

Wells Fargo is following the foreclosure law in Florida...which requires the Senior mortgage holder to file a complaint (a suit) against ALL junior lien owners to gain a clean title. ALL means including itself in the suit.

This is standard procedure...a paper process...that seldom ends up in court.

The suit gives notice to the junior lien holders of the foreclosure...and allows them the opportunity to prove their lien is legitmate. The suit begs the court to affirm the first deed holders position...in the string of liens....and render a decision/clean title in favor of the first
mortgage holder.

Two lawyers? Most lawyers or law firms will not represent both sides of a case.
Hence two lawyers.

This is a non-story!!

MN Realtor

Thanks for sharing the info. and clearing this issue up.

Rod Davis

Thank you for the clarification, but this mess really is a waste of time and money. If a bank has to sue itself then there is definitely something wrong.

richjohnson

It's no small wonder that the man on the street is losing confidence in the system & our profession

Louise Scoggins

I had a good chuckle over this post and reading the article. Protocal or not as one other commenter noted, it's still hilarious. What has happened to our system!! No wonder we are in such a mess...

NJShore

Well, it's entertaining and sure to drive traffic to your site. But, it's just legal mumbo jumbo. At best they are sueing themselves to protect themselves from other law suits. They know how they want the case to be "won" and will use it as a legal precedent in future lawsuits "if" they ever need it.

Instead of the WTF file, maybe you should put it in the "why they have got all the money file".

BTW, I liked the old format better.

Jay Thompson

Driving traffic wasn't the intent Gregory. I just find the whole thing ridiculous and very telling of the state of both our lending and legal systems. These kind of things never cease to amaze me.

It probably ought to go in the "Why the lawyers have all the money" file...

Thanks for the feedback on the new commenting system. As with any change, some seem to love it, others hate it, most probably don't care. I'm leaning toward keeping it, but you never know...

Rick @ SIP Provider

I'm not surprised to hear about the situation at Wells Fargo. If you've worked with a large corporation with division everywhere that don't have any thing to do with each other, it is a possibility. But also it exposes incompetency on the part of the legal counsels hired to protect their legal interests. I use to work for a computing company and one time I heard about a end-use customer filing some suit against us and named in the list of plaintiffs apparently was a company that was acquired several years earlier.

halifaxrealestate

You are right! This is kind of crazy. Do you think maybe they can claim the loss on their corporate taxes somehow? Then again they would probably have to pay on the win but I can't imagine them spending all that money on lawyers for no reason!

Cindy Knight

Last year we had a client who had WF same thing 1st/2nd and what a pain - SS never closed due to this kinda of stuff. Just not right with all that's going on.