It is a purely mischievous war, in which the man has already beaten two banks and is now fighting a real estate company. Despite everything, he remains firm in the comfortable three-bedroom house thanks to a loophole he detected in the bankruptcy code.
According to Clarín, the dispute began in 1998, when Hanspal acquired the house through a mortgage loan for which he barely paid a fee. Those $ 1,600 were the only thing he needed to stay for life in the spacious house of 185 m2 and a value of around 600 thousand dollars.
A year later, Washington Mutual Bank began efforts to foreclose and keep the property. In 2000 the justice stipulated that Hanspal had to leave and was “excluded forever” from any claim on the house. But for him the action was just beginning.
A few months later, he filed his first bankruptcy claim, court records show. Then, he presented another in November 2001, two in 2002 and one more in 2003.
Ready for anything, the man changed his strategy and, if bankruptcy filings didn’t work out, he simply went to state court for help. Many times acting as your own attorney.
Knowing that this resource was beginning to run out, Hanspal changed the plan. He transferred the deed to the house to a friend, Rajender Pal. Exactly, he had no rights to the property, however now he was incorporating a new player who was dirtying the cause a bit more.
Pal, using the Kenmore Street home address, filed for bankruptcy in 2005, again avoiding eviction. Judge Burton S. Joseph, who was handling the case at the time, had no choice and had to resign himself to accepting Hanspal’s gimmicks.
“The apparently frivolous conduct of Hanspel and Mr. Pal in using the court system and bankruptcy procedure as a sword to get out of legal debt, rather than a shield, is extremely puzzling to this Court,” wrote Joseph in 2005, threatening sanctions.
A trap that gave him impunity
Filing for bankruptcy established the “automatic stay” of the debt, which grants a temporary pause of all debt payments and foreclosures. It is intended as a help for those who lost everything, but Hanspel used it as a tool to have a great house for free.
Year 2008, the great crisis. One of the biggest bank collapses in history. The bursting of the mortgage bubble left many banks in the United States in ruin and Washington Mutual was one of those that sank among thousands of debtors without the ability to pay their mortgages. Its assets were eventually taken over by JP Morgan Chase.
But the change of hands did not provide any solution. The income of the powerful bank was not enough to expel Hanspal, and a lawsuit was maintained that by that time had already exceeded a decade.
In 2010 Hanspal decided to fight back and filed at least three lawsuits against JP Morgan Chase in the Nassau County Supreme Court. In turn, the two sides are also in an ongoing legal battle in federal court in Brooklyn.
As stated by the New York Post, Hanspal claimed in court that the bank committed “flagrant fraud” by trying to evict him when he did not have the proper property title, and accused the entity of withholding “surplus” funds from a previous auction. of the property. His real goal was to keep hindering the cause and stretching the deadlines so that the war on the desks never ends.
That is why Hanspal was criticized from Chase for “obstructing the judicial file” with “evidently frivolous” statements. Another tool used by the occupant of the house was an unexpected change of lawyers, hours before a hearing. Thus, the new lawyer had to excuse himself to be able to read the file and the judicial presentations had to be postponed.
The man also appealed again to the resource of the change of owners and thus there were four other bankruptcy declarations in the name of Boss Chawla and one more in the name of an alleged John Smith, who simply presented a written request.
Knowing all the tricks, Hanspal managed to get Chase to desist from the dispute in May 2018 and unload the property at Diamond Ridge, a real estate company. Knowing that the problem was not going to be easy to solve, Hanspal was offered a cash amount to leave the house: $ 20,000.
Understanding that move as a sign of weakness on the part of the company, the occupant did not accept the deal and instead declared bankruptcy again in 2019 and 2020.
An eternal and costly war
The legal battle is already an obsession, but despite the fortunes invested in lawyers specialized in the subject to be able to evict the man, the result does not change. So far it’s $ 150,000 in legal fees and about $ 50,000 in taxes for a property they cannot dispose of.
“It’s really a group of people who are more than willing to use the courts and abuse the courts to the extent they need to to extend their illegal occupation,” said attorney Jordan Katz, who represents Diamond Ridge Partners.
“Hanspal’s litigation history is incredibly long and sordid. I have never seen an occupation of such length as this. He is not legally occupying that property,” Katz added angrily. “It is an outrage.”
So far the company has spent $ 150,000 in legal fees and about $ 50,000 in taxes for property they cannot dispose of.
To make matters worse, the coronavirus pandemic worked in favor of the occupier as the government stipulated that evictions be halted. However, after more than two decades, the courts now seem interested in ending the case.
“The history of this case that stretches for approximately 20 years must come to an end,” Nassau District Judge Scott Fairgrieve – who is now in charge of the case – wrote in December 2019.
Of course, for that they will have to find a way that Hanspal can no longer stretch the deadlines and that would not be going well. On Wednesday, June 30, at the last hearing, William D. Friedman, the home occupant’s attorney, asked for more time to make his presentation. He explained that his partner, David Gevanter, had been hired the day before.
“This is the last of approximately 40 attorneys who have appeared on the eve of a hearing,” Diamond Ridge attorney Jordan Katz told the judge in exasperation. “This is very typical of the defendant: he recycles lawyers to buy more time,” added Max Sold, who works for Diamond Ridge: “This guy is basically making fun of the courts.”
As if enjoying the nerves of his colleagues, at the court hearing, Friedman accused Katz of using “scandalous language.” For now, the conflict remains unsolved, although one thing is clear: there are still many chapters missing in this novel.
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