One unexplained line in the bank's own spreadsheet sent the whole case back to court
The Hawaii Supreme Court has revived a decade-old foreclosure, ruling a mortgage trustee never proved the lender held the note when it sued.
The August 24, 2026 decision turns on standing - the right to bring a foreclosure - and on the records lenders use to show they possessed the note when the case began. For servicers and foreclosure counsel, the lesson is blunt: possession must be pinned to the filing date, not just some point before it.
Wells Fargo Bank sued to foreclose on a home in Waiʻanae on January 20, 2015. The borrowers had signed the note in 2008, and it was later assigned to Wells Fargo, which endorsed it in blank. Once a note carries a blank endorsement, whoever physically holds it can enforce it. In 2021, Wells Fargo assigned the mortgage to UMB Bank, which took over as plaintiff.
To win summary judgment - a ruling without a full trial - UMB had to show Wells Fargo held the note when the suit started. It offered two employee declarations and a spreadsheet tracking the note's whereabouts. A Wells Fargo vice president certified that he reviewed the original note on October 22, 2013. A business consultant declared that the bank's records showed continuous possession through the 2015 filing.
The trial court found that sufficient. The parties then signed a stipulation stating Wells Fargo held the note before the case began and that UMB was the current holder. A foreclosure decree followed in March 2024, and the Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed.
The justices rejected the borrowers' claim that the declarations and spreadsheet were inadmissible; the records were properly before the court. The problem was what they showed. The vice president's certification placed the note in Wells Fargo's hands in October 2013 - more than a year before the January 2015 filing. The spreadsheet meant to bridge that gap was full of undefined codes. One recurring entry, "Location Move," was never explained, and read in the borrowers' favor, it could mean the note went to a third party in November 2013.
An earlier ruling had accepted possession shown about six weeks before filing. A year-plus gap backed by murky records did not clear the bar. The stipulation didn't rescue UMB either - it never fixed a possession date and came after the flawed ruling.
The court vacated the appeals court ruling upholding the foreclosure and returned the case to the trial court. The borrowers' underlying default was never decided.
