Longtime Sacramento Restaurant Owner Files Wrongful Foreclosure Lawsuit Against Wells Fargo

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Garner & Associates, on behalf of their client Patricia Flynn, a longtime Sacramento resident and former Chops Steakhouse owner, filed an action for wrongful foreclosure against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Chops Steakhouse was a popular Sacramento destination frequented by California's top political and business leaders and a top fundraising choice for candidates. Over its fourteen years of operation, Chops Steakhouse was the recipient of multiple dining awards and was written about in numerous local and national publications, including the restaurant owner's most cherished tribute – being featured in various political cartoons by Pulitzer Prize recipient, Jack Ohman.

The lawsuit alleges that after responding to Wells Fargo's repeated offers of a home loan modification, Flynn was inundated with a revolving door of home loan preservation specialists, a deluge of misinformation from Wells Fargo, and redundant and duplicative requests for information.  After making repeated mistakes in processing her application and failing to modify her home loan, Flynn alleges that Wells Fargo made repeated false promises to correct the mistakes and made untrue statements about her to third parties such as Keep Your Home California, all in an effort to distract attention from a nation-wide home loan modification crisis. In the end, the amount of time devoted to dealing with Wells Fargo and the emotional toll associated with losing her family's home of more than 23 years was a crippling blow to the family-owned eatery which shuddered its doors in June of 2017.

Flynn received national media attention when she accepted the invitation of Sister Nora Nash to speak to the Wells Fargo Board of Directors at both the 2017 and 2018 Annual Shareholder Meetings to address the gross mishandling by Wells Fargo of her home loan modification.  Sister Nora Nash is the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.  She is also a member of the Philadelphia Coalition for Responsible Investment as well as the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR).

Sister Nora Nash stood alongside an emotional Flynn at the 2018 Wells Fargo Annual Shareholder's Meeting and made the following remark describing the process to which Flynn and others were subjected: "This Company has wounded millions of its customers. People across the country, including many here in the audience today, have had to confront profound difficulties – they have lost their homes, businesses and, in no small measure, their dignity - all because our company failed them. These people, your customers, who are guilty only of having trusted Wells Fargo to do the right thing, deserve to be validated, they deserve an honest reckoning of the events that led to these transgressions and, more importantly, they deserve a definitive apology." 

A year prior, at the 2017 Annual Shareholder Meeting, Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan spoke directly to Flynn in front a room full of people and said he would personally look into her home loan modification. "The fact Wells Fargo's CEO was personally familiar with Ms. Flynn's application, and has not called for a complete overhaul of the Company's home loan modification process is a testament to the depraved corporate culture at Wells Fargo which Sister Nora Nash has fought so tirelessly against," said her attorney John Garner of Garner & Associates. "I have great admiration for Sister Nora, and hope this lawsuit in some way contributes to her effort to improve the way Wells Fargo cares for its customers."    

Garner & Associates is a Northern California firm with experience representing parties in commercial litigation, high profile defamation cases, class actions, mass torts, and other consumer and employment related actions.  For this action, Garner & Associates has associated with Sacramento attorneys Tonya Nygren of the Nygren Law Office and Erika M. Gaspar of the Law Office of Erika M. Gaspar. 

For more information, please contact John R. Garner at Garner & Associates at (916) 573-3926.

SOURCE Garner & Associates