Jury Awards Man $2.5 Million in Foreclosure Case

An 84-year-old retired handyman, whose mortgage-free house was threatened with foreclosure because a mystery man borrowed money against it without his knowledge, won more than $2.5 million Friday from Aames Home Loan Co.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury in the courtroom of Judge Max F. Deutch unanimously awarded Carl Rookhuizen $200,000 for his emotional distress over the incident and $2,350,000 in punitive damages.

The attorney for the homeowner, Lawrence P. Grassini, said a man using Rookhuizen’s name obtained a $50,000 loan on Rookhuizen’s North Hollywood house, valued at $150,000, while Rookhuizen was recuperating from an illness at his brother’s home in Montana in 1982.

Grassini said the loan broker, who pocketed a $9,000 commission on the transaction, made no attempt to verify that the borrower actually owned the house.

The borrower, who has never been apprehended or charged with a crime, absconded with the $41,000, Grassini said, and Aames began foreclosure proceedings after no payments were made on the loan.

Rookhuizen, a widower who had bought the house in 1969 from his brother’s estate for $62,000 cash, first learned he had a problem on Aug. 4, 1983. His neighbor called to say a notice of a foreclosure auction had been taped to the front door.

“This was a guy who always paid cash for everything, never owned a credit card, never took out a loan,” Grassini said. “Talk about emotional distress.”

Rookhuizen delayed and finally prevented the foreclosure sale only after hiring a Montana lawyer and then returning to Los Angeles and soliciting help from the Los Angeles Police Department fraud unit.

Grassini said burglars took silverware and furniture from the house during the time foreclosure notices were posted.

Aames ultimately deeded the house back to Rookhuizen.

“My client thought all along they were trying to steal his house out from under him,” Grassini said. “Now he is happy, because the verdict means that nobody else will have to go through what he did.”

Aames, which maintained during the six-day trial that it had acted reasonably and legally in granting the loan, initiating the foreclosure and finally returning ownership of the house to Rookhuizen, is expected to appeal.