Mortgage

Key MERS legal employees turn away from company

Company now under federal scrutiny

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems was created back in the 1990s as an electronic registry for tracking mortgage assignments during the mass home-loan securitization craze. But now, almost two decades later, the once under-the-radar company is back in the spotlight as a handful of executive-level employees leave.

As foreclosure activity started to pick up, MERS found itself a named defendant in a plethora of legal cases where the scenario was roughly the same: a homeowner battling a foreclosure challenged MERS’ role as an electronic registry or its power to actually transfer foreclosure authority through assignments made in the system.

Now a portion of the company’s legal team that played a pivotal role in the lawsuits and freeing the company, has quit.

According to an article in Bloomberg, the firm’s chief legal officer, its national litigation coordinator, its corporate counsel and its chief internal auditor all left before MERS has been cleared from its settlement obligations.

As a result, the article noted that federal overseers have been scrutinizing their absence.

Bill Beckmann, the MERS CEO, said the company couldn’t discuss employee matters. Michael B. Skalka, the chief legal officer and the most senior of those who left, declined to comment.

Although, Beckman said, ““Merscorp Holdings, Inc. has had an overwhelmingly positive litigation record. The core team of dedicated lawyers who have been handling these matters is still with the company.”

But with or without these four legal players at the company, MERS has won court cases across the county and attempts to deflate it in court have been inconsistent at best. 

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