QUANTUM OF JUSTICE

Boggs fights to save his home from foreclosure in this debut legal memoir.

It takes a lot of gumption to sue a financial institution as big as Wells Fargo Bank. It takes even more to serve as your own attorney in the suit. As a professional real estate investor and developer, the author owned or partially owned 20 properties around the country when the 2008 housing crisis began. His business suffered over the next two years, but he never fell behind on his mortgage payments. Even so, on the last day of 2010, he received a letter in the mail alerting him that Wells Fargo was foreclosing on his Oakland, California, house—his personal residence, which he shared with his wife, Michelle. Boggs decided to fight the bank in court, though he soon realized that, given his lack of income, he would have to serve as his own lawyer. Little did he realize how much time and effort would be required for the case or how much he would learn, sometimes to his chagrin, about the American legal system: “I realized during the process that this wasn’t only about trying to save my home from being foreclosed on illegally,” he writes. “It was also about trying to put a stop to how this could happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The author chronicles his case in detail—court documents make up a good portion of the book’s 450-page bulk—and provides extensive background on the history of banking and property law. Unfortunately, his prose tends to be a bit overwritten, as when he describes his reaction to the foreclosure notice: “The air was stiff and confining. I felt its syrupy heaviness as I inhaled. The act of breathing had become substantially more difficult. I felt as if the living room’s golden, sponge painted walls were closing in on me. For me, it is a day that will live in infamy.” Though the account is fascinating for what it reveals about the ability of lenders to take people’s homes, the reading experience is very dry.

A lengthy, slightly impenetrable account of a David-and-Goliath legal case.