Home on the rage
Ire as city cleared on deed fraud
A MAN WHO swiped an elderly woman’s house with phony documents did time for the crime — but an appellate court is letting the city off the hook for processing the paperwork that let the ex-con make himself at home.
A Brooklyn appeals court has ruled that a judge was right to toss a lawsuit brought against the city by Jennifer Merin — whose Queens abode was filched by a criminal who filed a fraudulent deed.
Merin, 74, had sued the city for not catching the forgery when the paperwork was first filed, but lost on appeal when the court backed a judge who said she couldn’t prove the city was negligent.
The feisty homeowner is fuming and has vowed to fight the decision.
“I find it absolutely astonishing and sickening that the city that gave away my property without due process by registering an obviously fraudulent deed, while it was still charging me for taxes on that property and water usage on that property, is now insisting that it has no accountability for those actions,” Merin told the Daily News.
The city said Merin was suing over a missed “needle in a haystack,” according to court papers.
The phony deed that started all the problems was one of almost 1,400 deeds recorded that week, city lawyers noted.
Merin “was the victim of a crime none of us would want to experience but the law is clear, the city was not liable,” Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said, emphasizing that the city has bulked up safeguards to address deed fraud.
Merin, a Manhattan resident, inherited the Tudor-style house after her mother died.
The Laurelton home has been in her family since it was built in 1930. She stored heirlooms and belongings there, and sometimes slept there as well.
But in March 2014, Darrell Beatty filed a transfer report with the city. He’d moved into Merin’s place a month earlier without her knowledge.
Beatty’s dubious deed transfer stated a woman named Edith Moore sold him the property for $0 a year earlier.
But the filings had all sorts of issues that were easy to spot, like the fact there was no Edith Moore and there no mention of Merin, her lawyers said.
“Without the city’s approval, Beatty’s deed would have been nothing more than a piece of paper,” they wrote.
Merin got wise to the uninvited inhabitant several months later when she saw a spike in her water bill. It took years of legal battles to get Beatty out and have Merin declared the owner. Beatty, 52, pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a forged instrument. He was sentenced in September 2016 to a year behind bars.
Meanwhile, Merin sued the city for negligence and a violation of her civil rights. But a Queens judge and most recently the borough’s appellate court both ruled that Merin’s arguments didn’t prove city liability.
The experience has embittered the homeowner, who still has to repair damages left by the squatter.
Beatty, who moved in with his sons, Darrell Kash Beatty, 25, and DeShaun Beatty, 22, also threw out or disposed of most of Merin’s family heirlooms, she said.
“Victims apparently have no rights at all,” Merin said. “And the court’s insistence that I have no right to sue just digs deeper in uprooting my faith in the system.”