California Court of Appeal

The trial court's order sustaining defendant lienholder's and defendant debt collector's demurrers to plaintiff borrowers' complaint is affirmed in part and reversed in part, where: 1) a lender who lends money used to purchase a parcel of property and who holds a junior lien on that property cannot sue the borrower personally for the loan balance if the senior lienholder who also contributed to the purchase of the property forecloses on the property but does not collect enough from the foreclosure sale to pay off the junior lien holder (Former Code of Civil Procedure section 580b); 2) the borrower may sue the debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and may sue the debt collector or the junior lienholder under the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Unfair Competition Law for trying to collect the no-longer-enforceable debt if the lienholder's collection efforts inaccurately imply that the debt is still enforceable, as here; and 3) the borrower may not sue for violations of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/12/2015
• Published 03/12/2015

Judges

• Hoffstadt

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel