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When homeowners fall behind on their mortgage, the legal process to recover the property can take years of dispute between the lender and borrower over the property.
Few cases show that as clearly as the one involving Gregory Brian Myers and his wife, Barbara Ann Kelly, who have been in a legal fight with their bank over a property in Naples, Florida, for nearly 17 years.
It all lasted until Monday, October 19, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected Myers’ latest challenge and upheld the dismissal of his lawsuit against the bank, according to court records available on Justia.
How the legal dispute over the property began
The case started in 2009, when U.S. Bank, which held the mortgage on behalf of a mortgage-backed securities trust, sued the couple over unpaid installments.
A Florida court ruled in the bank’s favor after finding that they had missed 66 monthly payments. Kelly had originally bought the property and later added Myers as a co-owner.
The couple appealed. Meanwhile, Myers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Maryland, which temporarily stopped the bank from moving forward.
The $5,000-a-month agreement between the couple and the bank
In November 2016, Myers and the bank reached an agreement: the appeals could continue, but the bank could not sell the property until they were finally decided in its favor.
In exchange, Myers had to deposit $5,000 a month into a court account in Maryland. He later said he had deposited a total of $70,000.
If the bank won, it could keep that money, but it had to count it toward the couple’s debt. In 2018, a Florida appeals court upheld the foreclosure, which ended the appeals that had blocked the sale.
The final verdict of the court over the couple’s lawsuit
In 2024, when the bank tried to schedule a sale of the property, Myers sued again. He accused the bank of breaking the 2016 agreement, of fraud, and of violating a federal law on debt collection practices.
The courts disagreed. The key point was that the agreement never promised to stop the sale permanently: it only prevented it while the appeals were pending. Since those appeals ended in 2018, the bank did not break the deal by moving forward.
A new Myers lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning he cannot bring the same claims again in that case.