Court rules buyer can’t sue after ‘robo’ foreclosure

A Massachusetts man who bought property in a faulty foreclosure sale isn’t the true owner and so doesn’t have the right to sue over it, the state’s high court ruled.

The ruling could have implications in the foreclosure crisis, in which banks are accused of clouding home titles through sloppy transferring of mortgages, now known as “robo signing.”

The Supreme Judicial Court, which in January found that banks can’t foreclose on a house if they don’t own the mortgage, went one step further in a closely watched case and said a sale after that foreclosure doesn’t transfer the property. Therefore, the buyer couldn’t bring his court action against a previous owner, the court ruled.

The high court upheld a lower-court decision that said Francis J. Bevilacqua III, the buyer of residential property in Haverhill, Massachusetts, never owned it because U.S. Bancorp foreclosed before it got the mortgage.