Foreclosure case sent back to district court

PORTLAND – An Orrington man’s case against Peoples Heritage Bank was sent back to district court Tuesday by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Earlier this year, Rodney E. Pease, 66, entered into a repayment agreement with the recovery department of the bank over debts he owed the bank. Bank employee Thomas M. Davis was unaware that another department of the bank had commenced a foreclosure action against Pease at the time of the agreement.

When Davis learned of the foreclosure, he told Pease that the two checks he had submitted in payment would be returned and that the repayment plan had been rescinded.

The justices unanimously agreed Tuesday that once “Peoples’ agent offered Pease the opportunity to enter into a repayment agreement, and Pease accepted, the parties were bound to the terms of the agreement. … By going forward with the foreclosure action, Peoples breached the terms of the repayment agreement.”

The court also ruled that Pease could seek damages from the bank because he was denied the opportunity to prevent foreclosure.

In another matter, the court affirmed an administrative ruling by the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services on a grievance filed by an Aroostook County woman. The Hamlin resident alleged she received inadequate care when she was a voluntary patient in the psychiatric unit at the Aroostook Medical Center in 1999.

As a condition of its license, the hospital is required to comply with the Rights of Recipients of Mental Health Services. Dissatisfied with her treatment, the woman filed a grievance following procedures outlined in that document.

In early 2001, the commissioner of the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services dismissed the woman’s grievance, concluding that the Department of Human Services had license authority over the hospital. The woman appealed that decision to Superior Court in Kennebec County; the appeal was denied. She then asked the high court to decide the matter.

The court ruled that because the Aroostook County hospital is not a designated nonstate mental health institution, it does not contract with BDS and was not the administrative body that could consider the woman’s grievance.