Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lordarminius | Hacker News Reader

> Thus, to enforce the consequences of the license termination, we have filed a lawsuit... We believe we have the evidence, the financial means and the determination to bring this lawsuit to a successful end.

The part about financial means stood out for me. All societies should work harder to ensure that money is not an impediment to obtaining justice.

View on HN

I filed a lawsuit against someone who is using the money they stole frome to defend themselves. Basically if I win the money I get will be essentially gone and the Defendant will not have the means to pay anything back.

This is how it works in Czech Republic.

Two brothers defrauded the government by forging signatures of the owners and notaries for the transfer of property deeds and took several hundred thousand Euros worth of land from various people.

My friend's family has been in court for 10 years trying to get it back.

The brothers mortgaged the properties to pay for litigation.

The real shit sandwich is that one brother died, and if the other brother dies, they start the proceedings all over again. If they win, it's purely in the name of justice; the lawyer will keep most of the money as payment for 10 years of litigation.

Lose-lose.

Im amazed they found a bank who would provide a mortgage against a property that was part of a legal dispute over ownership.

How would a bank know?

Legal due diligence?

When I bought a house, all sorts of legal checks were required before I was allowed a mortgage. That seems like it would be standard practice.

Did they check apart from the deed if somebody litigates? I mean is this info even public?

You'd think you couldn't even buy a car these days without knowing every accident it was ever in.

Surprisingly, you can...

I would assume that the bank checks these things as part of a checklist before granting a loan?

In the US anyway, most banks will require the buyer to purchase something called "title insurance" -- which is basically insurance against unknown claims against the property. That insurer will generally look into things at least a little bit.

Obviously it could be different in the Czech Republic.

They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless. If a court does rule that the transfer was fraudulent, the bank can cancel the mortgage and demand immediate repayment.

Of course, once it's time for a criminal to pay up, both they and the money mysteriously vanishes.

TL;DR, identity verification should be improved. Signatures are not working.

> They wouldn't since the property deed was transferred; as long as a court doesn't rule that the transfer was illegal because of forged signatures, the bank won't / shouldn't do anything - what if the accusation is baseless.

The bank isn't under any obligation to give you a mortgage. From their point of view they're lending you a big wedge of cash with the property as collateral, so they should be trying to satisfy themselves that the collateral is enough to cover the loan in case you default. If there's a non-negligible chance that the person they're lending the money to doesn't actually own the property (e.g. they're tied up in a legal dispute over ownership) then the bank has no collateral and is taking on a big risk.

> If a court does rule that the transfer was fraudulent, the bank can cancel the mortgage and demand immediate repayment.

What if the person doesn't have any means to pay back the mortgage? The bank has then just made a chunky loss. This is why the bank will typically do background checks on the property to establish ownership, condition of the property, environmental risks etc. (though this doesn't seem to have happened here, or the checks weren't overly thorough).

I wouldn't be surprised if some jurisdiction still allow the banks to use the property as a collateral even if the 'real' owner didn't agree.

In the USA a title company that validates the ownership provides a title insurance for exactly this case. If the true owner of the house is determined (typically in court) not to be the one the title company claims, then the title insurance pays the damages to the injured party. Or at least this is the theory.

Title Companies provide this information in the USA.

I'd assume someone like that existed there as well.

If they win, most of the lawyer fees will be paid by the losing party.

Except the losing party won't have any money that can be recovered.

How do you keep people from taking justice into their own hands in such situations?

You don't, but the legal case will be thrown out if the victim assaults the accused and the victim may go to jail for assault or whatever.

Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, of course.

I feel like you are supposed to be able to get an injunction against this, but in practice it is probably stupid hard :(.

They took out a mortgage after being served but before they ever got in a court room. The law is so slow here that it could've taken years just to settle that issue. Probably easier to address post victory.

Isn't it in the duty of care of the bank to make sure that the property they give a mortgage on is actually owned by the mortgagee?

I would assume that you should get the land and the bank can then sue the brothers to get their money back. Why should the mortgage be transfered to the original owners, they never agreed to it.

Yes, but the bank can afford more and better lawyers, so good luck getting them to eat the cost of the mortgage.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying this is at all the desired outcome, that the people who have been swindled out of their property lose all their money.

I'm just predicting the likely outcome.

In Federal court the U.S. Supreme Court has set a high burden of proof for a plaintiff seeking an injunction. Unfortunately, once case law is established its nearly impossible to change. In this instance, in a civil case based on diversity it would be really difficult to prove public interest. Generally injunctions in federal courts are used to prevent states from doing things, like proceeding with an execution or changing voting laws.

The more relevant question is: who is backing them and what do they hope to get out of this lawsuit? I wouldn't be surprised if this is paid for by some venture fund and that they are seeking financial compensation of some sort. I call BS on them trying to somehow helping the open source community by dishing out lawsuits. It's rather doing the opposite. Anyone using GPL-licensed software is going to be dead-scared to get sued by some copyleft fundamentalists.

"Work harder" does not mean much though. It's an empty saying.

Yeah, the system is worthless and nothing can fix it. So why try? This is the kind of nihilistic ideation that leads to a generation of basement troglodytes waiting for their mom to die so they can own a house. The system is definitely here to stay, so either working harder to fix said system is a notional good or else we're all supposed to give up. This is the problem with quests for justice being entirely online and not based in any kind of daily reality.

Beyond the bar of affording a decent attorney, money really isn't an obstacle to obtaining justice in America, and I can only think the reason they wrote that into their press release was because their lawyers wanted to impress upon everyone that they wouldn't be limited or badgered in their methods of pursuit. It's far too early to cry foul or assume that the system is rigged against them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com