Nancy J. Becker, County Recorder for Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, announced Tuesday that she is filing a lawsuit against MERS, seeking $15.7 million in back fees for mortgage assignments she says MERS failed to record, according to a report in the Montgomery County Intelligencer.
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According to Becker, the suit is the product of two years of investigation and consultation with lawyers. Lawyers signed off on the advisability of filing suit several weeks ago, but Becker says she held off on filing suit until she could inform county commissioners of the move.
In addition to her objective of collecting the back fees, Becker believes that forcing MERS members to record mortgage assignments will enable homeowners to keep track of who owns their mortgage.
Becker's research indicates that as of the end of September, 146,715 MERS mortgages have been recorded in in Montgomery County since April 2004.
Becker's lawsuit is intended as a class action, indicating the possibility of other counties joining the suit.
Becker made headlines in April when she pulled the County Recorder office's funds from a MERS member bank in protest of MERS and deposited the money in a local bank. See "Another County Recorder Pulls Money from MERS Bank", Source of Title, 4/17/2011.
Montgomery County is the 70th most populated county in the country, encompassing densely populated suburbs northwest of Philadelphia. Several other top 100 counties by population have sued or are planning to sue MERS, including recent moves by Harris County, Dallas County, Bexar County, and Hidalgo County in Texas.