Remember: Things That Are “Routine” to Lawyers Can Be Confusing to Pro Se Plaintiffs

A recent case out of the Eastern District of Michigan, Bucciarelli v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, No. 15-13900, is an illustration of the confusion that can sometimes occur when two parties talk past each other and never really understand each other. The result is that there is no enforceable contract between these parties who never seem to be on the same page.

This is a mortgage foreclosure case in which settlement was attempted but complicated by the fact that there was a lawyer on one side and a pro se plaintiff on the other and they never seemed to be speaking the same language. The defendant’s counsel tried to settle the case by by proposing a “routine” settlement to the plaintiff of $500. The plaintiff responded to the proposal by calling the defendant’s counsel leaving the following message:

I don’t know where it stands but I got it couple days ago regarding the settlement offer of $500 from Countrywide. We can go ahead and do that. So if you wanna give me a call back. My number is []. I do have a lot of mistakes in the Countrywide financial [unclear]. Of those funds that were applied and misapplied to my account but my main focus is Wells Fargo who purchased the loans from Countrywide after Countrywide made some substantial mistakes. Give me a call back. Mary. Thanks bye.

The defendant focused on the “We can go ahead and do that,” but the court pointed out that the plaintiff went on after that statement to make allegations regarding Countrywide’s mistaken behavior toward her. The court characterized this voicemail as “ambiguous as to her acceptance of all the proposed terms” of the settlement agreement, especially considering that, once the plaintiff received an actual draft of the entire settlement agreement, she refused to execute it. When the defendant moved to enforce the settlement agreement on the basis of the voice message (and subsequent other telephone calls whose contents seem to be disputed), the plaintiff countered that there was no agreement to settle the case. 

In this situation, the court said that it did not feel that the parties had ever agreed on all of the material terms of the settlement. There was no mutual understanding between the parties. The court concluded that each party “heard only what it wanted to hear,” and pushed back on defendant’s characterization of the settlement offer as “routine”: “[I]t must be remembered that Ms. Bucciarelli is appearing pro se, and therefore it is likely that nothing in this litigation is ‘routine’ to her.”