Deutsche Bank Nat'l Trust Co. v. Walker Cnty.
Decision Date | 28 June 2019 |
Docket Number | 1160926 |
Citation | 292 So.3d 317 |
Parties | DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, AS TRUSTEE OF ANY SPECIFIC RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITY (RMBS) AT ISSUE, et al. v. WALKER COUNTY et al. |
Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Barry A. Ragsdale and R. Ryan Daugherty of Sirote & Permutt, P.C., Birmingham; and Robert M. Brochin and Clay M. Carlton of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Miami, Florida, for appellants MERSCORP, Inc., n/k/a MERSCORP Holdings, Inc., and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.
Michael R. Pennington of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, Birmingham; Elizabeth A. Frohlich of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, San Francisco, California; and Allyson W. Ho of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP, Dallas, Texas, for appellant Deutsche Bank National Trust Company.
Allan S. Jones of Carr Allison, Birmingham, for appellant CIS Financial Services, Inc., d/b/a CIS Home Loans.
Justin L. Jones, James C. King, Henry C. Wiley, and Franklin G. Williams of King, Wiley & Williams, Jasper; Richard Frankowski of The Frankowski Firm, LLC, Birmingham; and Keith McKerall of Burke Harvey, LLC, Birmingham, for appellees.
Robert K. Spotswood, Michael T. Sansbury, and Morgan B. Franz of Spotswood Sansom & Sansbury, LLC, Birmingham, for amici curiae Alabama Bankers Association, Inc., Business Council of Alabama, and Mortgage Bankers Association of Alabama, Inc., in support of appellants.
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company ("Deutsche Bank"); MERSCORP, Inc., and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (hereinafter referred to collectively as "MERS"); and CIS Financial Services, Inc. ("CIS"), the defendants below (all hereinafter referred to collectively as "the defendants"), petitioned this Court for permission, pursuant to Rule 5, Ala. R. App. P., to appeal the trial court's denial of their motions seeking to dismiss the claims of the plaintiffs--Walker County and Rick Allison, in his official capacity as judge of probate of Walker County (hereinafter referred to collectively as "the plaintiffs")--seeking class-based relief on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated Alabama counties and judges of probate. For the reasons discussed below, we reverse and remand.
In what the record presently before us describes as a "substantively identical prior pending action," this Court explained the pertinent factual background surrounding the underlying dispute as follows:
Ex parte MERSCORP, Inc., 141 So. 3d 984, 986-88 (Ala. 2013) (footnotes omitted).
Deutsche Bank serves as trustee for numerous residential mortgage-backed security ("RMBS") trusts containing mortgages for properties located in Walker County and other Alabama counties (hereinafter referred to collectively as "the counties"). In this case, the plaintiffs initiated the underlying litigation against Deutsche Bank "seeking to recover the benefit [Deutsche Bank allegedly] received by relying on the real property recording systems of the Counties without compensating the Counties for that benefit." The complaint alleged:
Thus, according to the plaintiffs, Deutsche Bank had represented "to the public and to RMBS investors that the RMBS trusts had the benefit of perfected mortgages, a benefit that[, according to the plaintiffs,] could only be obtained by properly using the Counties' services for recording assignment." More specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that Alabama law requires mortgage assignments to be recorded; therefore, they maintained, the above-described...
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