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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS

No. 13-CV-1030

CAROLYN MOORE, APPELLANT,

V.

DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST COMPANY, APPELLEE. 

Appeal from the Superior Court

of the District of Columbia

(CAR-2580-11)

(Hon. Thomas J. Motley, Trial Judge)

(Submitted March 17, 2015 Decided September 17, 2015)

Craig A. Butler was on the brief for appellant.

John R. Fischel and James A. Sullivan, Jr., were on the brief for appellee.

Before WASHINGTON, Chief Judge, THOMPSON, Associate Judge, and PRYOR, 

Senior Judge.

THOMPSON, Associate Judge: Appellee Deutsche Bank National Trust 

Company (“Deutsche Bank”) purchased the real property located at 54 Rhode 

Island Avenue, N.W. (“the property”), at a foreclosure sale and then brought a 

complaint for possession in the Landlord Tenant Branch of Superior Court. In 

response, appellant Carolyn Moore, a defendant in the Landlord Tenant action, 
2

filed a plea of title and counterclaim against Deutsche Bank, asserting that she was 

the rightful owner of the property. After a bench trial, the Superior Court (the 

Honorable Thomas Motley) rejected the plea of title and counterclaim and granted 

Deutsche Bank a non-redeemable judgment of possession. On appeal, appellant 

argues (1) that she provided sufficient evidence for the trial court to find that the 

Deed of Sale that purportedly conveyed her interest in the property was forged; and 

(2) that she provided sufficient evidence for the trial court to find that the real 

estate transaction was fraudulent.1 We affirm the judgment of the trial court. 

I.

In her testimony at trial, appellant provided the following background 

information pertinent to her claims of forgery and fraud: She purchased the 

property in 2003, financing the purchase with a $426,500 mortgage loan from New 

Century Mortgage Corporation. Thereafter, struggling to make her mortgage 

payments, she decided to convert the basement of the property into two 

condominiums that she could sell or use to generate rental income. After speaking 

with an architect, appellant believed that she needed $300,000 to pay for the 

 

1

 Appellant also argues that Deutsche Bank was not a bona fide purchaser 

of the property for value. This is an issue we need not reach. 
3

necessary remodeling and set about obtaining a construction loan or a refinancing 

of her mortgage, so that she could take this amount out of the equity in the 

property. She was eventually introduced to Darwin Farmer, who she understood to 

be a loan officer for Premier Mortgage Funding. Appellant testified that Farmer 

informed her that she could probably get the loan but that she would need a cosigner; that Farmer also told her that a businessman named Reginald Walker would 

be willing to co-sign for her, provided that she paid him $100,000; and that she 

agreed to this arrangement. 

On December 20, 2005, appellant attended settlement at the office of 

Millennium Title & Abstract. The meeting took place in a conference room with 

only two other people in attendance: Mr. Walker, whom she was meeting for the 

first time, and a Mr. Nash, a notary. According to appellant’s testimony, during 

the closing, Nash handed documents to her “one or two at a time” and instructed 

her to sign them. Neither Walker nor Nash gave any explanations or made any 

representations to her about what each document meant, and she never asked any 

questions. Although no one prevented appellant from reading the documents, she 

acknowledged at trial that she signed many of the documents without “reading 

them completely” and signed others without reading them at all. 
4

In the aftermath of the closing, appellant received checks totaling 

$78,435.45. Realizing that this amount was far less than she had been expecting, 

even after the fee to be paid to Mr. Walker, appellant contacted Premier Mortgage 

Funding, which she believed to be Mr. Farmer’s employer, and was informed that 

the company had no record of her loan. About a month after the closing, having 

contacted Mr. Walker and demanded an explanation, appellant met him at his 

attorney’s office. Mr. Walker informed her that she had sold him the property, that 

he had a sales contract with her signature on it, and that she could have the 

property back for $800,000. At trial, she denied that she had signed a sales 

contract, testified that she was “absolutely sure” that the signature on the purported 

sales contract was not hers, and described how the signature on the sales contract 

differed from her own.2 

Appellant did acknowledge signing or writing other documents that referred 

to the transaction that was the subject of the settlement as a sales transaction. For 

 

2

 Appellant sued Walker for fraud and eventually settled with him, agreeing 

to help him cover his $720,000 WMC Mortgage Corporation mortgage on the 

property by paying him $1815 every month until January 2008, at which point he 

would transfer title in the property to her, provided she had obtained the financing 

necessary to pay off his mortgage. Mr. Walker thereafter defaulted on the 

mortgage (which had been sold to Morgan Stanley and placed into a trust of which 

Deutsche Bank was the trustee), and Wells Fargo, the loan servicer, foreclosed. 

The property was sold at auction and purchased by Deutsche Bank. 
5

example, appellant acknowledged that she signed a HUD-1 settlement statement —

a standard form she had previously seen at least five times when buying and selling 

other properties — by placing her signature on a line marked “seller.” She 

admitted that she saw the word “seller” at the time, but testified that she did not 

intend to sell her home and believed the document was simply “incorrect.”3 

Appellant further acknowledged that she executed a “Correction Agreement, 

Limited Power of Attorney,” which she signed above the line that says “seller.” 

She also testified that after the closing, Mr. Farmer dictated the words of a 

disbursement authorization, which she wrote out in longhand and signed. The 

authorization states, in part: “Of the proceeds of the sale of 54 Rhode Island 

Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20001, please provide [$]100,000 to Reggie 

Walker[.]” (Emphasis added.) A few days after the closing, appellant signed a 

second disbursement authorization that similarly began, “I, Carolyn L. Moore, 

authorize Millennium Title to disburse the proceeds of the sale of my property 

located at 54 Rhode Island Avenue NW as follows[.]” (Emphasis added.) 

 

3

 Appellant acknowledged that she also saw that the HUD-1 form indicated 

that the seller would receive $169,000. Even though she believed she was 

supposed to receive $300,000 from the refinancing, she did not walk away from 

the transaction. 
6

Appellant acknowledged that the signature on the deed filed with the 

Recorder of Deeds, which shows a conveyance of the property to Walker for 

$800,000, “looks like my signature.” She testified, however, that she did not 

remember signing that document, and her counsel asserted that the signature was 

either “a Xeroxed copy of her signature . . . or . . . a signature that someone wrote 

to make it look like hers[.]” Appellant also showed the trial court that an unsigned 

deed included in a packet of documents that she took home with her after the 

closing differed from the recorded deed, in that it listed Mr. Walker as the “parties 

of the first part” and appellant as the party of the second part (whereas the recorded 

deed listed appellant as the party of the first part and Walker as the party of the 

second part). The recorded deed also has an irregularity: the notary block purports 

to acknowledge Mr. Walker’s signature, although his signature does not appear on 

the deed. 

In an August 19, 2013, written order, Judge Motley found that appellant did 

not meet her burden to demonstrate that the deed was forged or altered or that the 

underlying transaction was fraudulent. 

II.
7

On appeal, appellant renews several of the arguments she made in the trial 

court. She appears no longer to contend that her signature on the deed is a 

forgery,4but argues that the deed recorded in the land records was altered and is a 

forged document for that reason; that the transaction by which she purportedly 

conveyed the property to Mr. Walker was fraudulent; and that, for those reasons, 

the transaction was void ab initio, invalidating the interest in the property claimed 

by Deutsche Bank as well as the interests of the individual (Mr. Walker) and the 

lenders that preceded Deutsche Bank in the chain of title. Appellant contends that 

she provided clear and convincing evidence to support her claims and that the trial 

court therefore erred in ruling that she failed to meet her burden of proof and in 

rejecting her plea of title. 

Appellant first argues that the evidence permitted the trial court to “infer that 

the blank [i.e., unsigned] deed [contained in the packet of documents that appellant 

 

4

 Even if appellant did intend to pursue that claim, we would reject her 

challenge to Judge Motley’s findings. While Judge Motley acknowledged 

appellant’s testimony that she had no memory of signing any deed, he reasonably 

found that her lack of memory was “unremarkable” in light of her testimony that 

she signed some documents at the closing without even reading them. Judge 

Motley also noted appellant’s initial, repeated testimony that the signature on the 

deed looked like hers; the absence of expert testimony that the signature was a 

forgery; and the lack of “obvious signs that [appellant’s] signature on the Deed of 

Sale is materially different from her signature on other documents which [she] 

admitted to signing.” Judge Motley reasonably found that all of these factors 

detracted from the strength of appellant’s case.
8

brought home from the closing] was the deed that was presented to [Ms.] Moore 

during the 12/20/05 Transaction and that the deed was subsequently forged in 

order [to] get it recorded[.]” We cannot agree; we discern no error in Judge 

Motley’s determination that the evidence was insufficient to enable appellant to 

meet her difficult burden of proving that the deed was forged.5 Judge Motley 

reasonably found that the unsigned deed in appellant’s packet did not compel an 

inference that she was given that version of the deed to sign at the closing. As 

Judge Motley recognized, a mistake in the deed could have been found at the 

closing and a new copy made for signature, with appellant simply “retain[ing] an 

earlier unsigned draft of the document” that had been included in a packet of 

copies made for her records. The mistake in the notary block also does not 

indicate that the deed was forged, because it could have simply been a “clerical 

error[,]” as the trial court deemed it to be. A clerical mistake of this sort could 

have easily been made while Mr. Nash (who, appellant testified, did not notarize 

 

5

 “[T]here is a ‘presumption that a deed is what it purports to be on its face, 

and one who seeks to establish the contrary has the burden of doing so by clear and 

convincing evidence.’” In re Estate of Munawar, 981 A.2d 584, 587 (D.C. 2009)

(quoting Smart v. Nevins, 298 A.2d 217, 219 (D.C. 1972)). Clear and convincing 

evidence is “evidence that will produce in the mind of the trier of fact a firm belief 

or conviction as to the facts sought to be established.” Lumpkins v. CSL 

Locksmith, LLC, 911 A.2d 418, 426 n.7 (D.C. 2006) (internal quotation marks 

omitted).
9

any of the documents in front of her) was notarizing the batch of documents after 

the closing.6 

Appellant next argues that she provided sufficient evidence for the trial court 

to find fraud (both fraud in the factum and fraudulent inducement) by clear and 

convincing evidence. Again, we disagree. Fraud in the factum is “the sort of fraud 

that procures a party’s signature to an instrument without knowledge of its true

nature or contents.” Chen v. Bell-Smith, 768 F. Supp. 2d 121, 135 (D.D.C. 2011)

(quoting Langley v. FDIC, 484 U.S. 86, 93 (1987)). Parties alleging fraud in the 

factum must prove their claim by clear and convincing evidence, and they will be 

estopped from making such a claim “if as . . . literate and reasonably intelligent 

person[s they] fail[] to read the instrument.” Columbia Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n v. 

Jackson, 131 A.2d 404, 408 (D.C. 1957).7 

 

6

 This mistake in the signed and filed deed’s acknowledgment does not 

otherwise make the deed invalid. The District’s curative statute provides that “a 

defective or improper acknowledgment[,]” D.C. Code § 42-404 (a)(1) (2001), in 

“[a]ny instrument recorded in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds on or after April 

27, 1994, shall be effective . . . unless the failure is challenged in a judicial 

proceeding commenced within [six] months after the instrument is recorded.” 

D.C. Code § 42-403 (2001). Ms. Moore’s claim was brought years after the deed 

was recorded. 

7

 “Successful invocations of the fraud in the factum defense are rare, and 

only in the most extreme situations have courts of any jurisdiction found a fraud in 

(continued...)
10

The evidence at trial showed that appellant is a college graduate who had 

engaged in numerous property transactions before the transaction in issue here. 

She acknowledged in her trial testimony that she had the opportunity to read all the 

documents that were given to her during the closing, but that she chose to sign 

many without “reading them completely” and to sign others without reading them 

at all. As the trial court emphasized, and as described above, by her own 

admission, she signed or wrote in longhand “numerous [at least four] documents at 

closing in which she represented that she was ‘selling’ the property to Mr. 

Walker.” Further, appellant testified that no one told her what the closing 

documents purported to do, and she provided no evidence that anyone 

misrepresented the nature of the documents she was signing.8 We agree with 

Judge Motley that the weight of the evidence did not support appellant’s claim that 

she signed the closing documents believing that they were refinancing documents. 

Moreover, even if we assume the contrary arguendo, if appellant did not 

understand the nature of the closing documents, the evidence supports a conclusion 

 

(...continued)

the factum defense to be viable.” Chen, 768 F. Supp. 2d at 135 (internal quotation 

marks omitted).

8

 The facts of this case are thus unlike those in Modern Management Co. v. 

Wilson, 997 A.2d 37 (D.C. 2010), in which the defendants “told [the plaintiff 

homeowner] that the sale documents were a ‘legal fiction’” and thereby 

fraudulently induced her to enter into a transaction “three days before her house 

was scheduled to go into foreclosure[.]” See id. at 40-41, 63 n.31.
11

that her misunderstanding was due to her own negligence, negating any fraud-inthe-factum defense, as the trial court found. See Chen, 768 F. Supp. 2d at 126-27, 

136 (finding that where plaintiffs believed they were refinancing their home but 

were actually selling it, there was no fraud in the factum because the collegeeducated “plaintiffs were fully capable of reading and understanding the deed of 

sale and the HUD-1 settlement statement” but “chose to sign these documents 

without reading them”). 

As to appellant’s fraudulent inducement claim, Judge Motley correctly 

recognized that appellant had the burden to show, inter alia, that she relied on 

misrepresentations about the nature of the transaction when she signed the 

documents at closing.9 Judge Motley found “little question that the transaction . . . 

 

9

 There are two separate standards that can be applied in a fraudulent 

inducement case. The first standard enables an individual who signed a contract 

due to a fraudulent misrepresentation to obtain relief by proving, by clear and 

convincing evidence, that there was “(1) a false representation (2) made in 

reference to a material fact, (3) with knowledge of its falsity, (4) with the intent to 

deceive, and (5) an action that is taken in reliance upon the representation[.]” In re 

Estate of McKenney, 953 A.2d 336, 342 (D.C. 2008) (quoting Park v. Sandwich

Chef, Inc., 651 A.2d 798, 801 (D.C. 1994)). Alternatively, individuals seeking 

rescission of a contract (and not damages) need only show, by a preponderance of 

the evidence, that they were prejudiced by relying on a misrepresentation of 

material facts (even if the misrepresentation was made innocently and without 

fraudulent intent). Estate of McKenney, 953 A.2d at 342 (citing Barrer v. 

Women’s Nat’l Bank, 761 F.2d 752, 757-58 (D.C. Cir. 1985)). For the reasons set 

(continued...)
12

was not a legitimate transaction” (because, for example, “it is highly unlikely that 

[WMC Mortgage Corporation] would have . . . approved a $720,000 loan” to Mr. 

Walker when he was to receive a portion of the proceeds as a “co-signer” fee) and 

recognized that “there is an inference that WMC [Mortgage Corporation] was 

defrauded[.]” However, Judge Motley was “unable to accept as true and accurate 

[appellant’s] testimony that she believed the documents she was signing were part 

of a refinancing and not the sale of her property.” He therefore rejected appellant’s 

fraudulent inducement claim, as she could not prove that she relied on 

misrepresentations about the agreed-to transaction when she signed the documents 

at closing. 

We are satisfied that the trial court reasonably found that “[t]he evidence 

indicating [that] Ms. Moore knew that the transaction was a sale of her property is 

overwhelming.” As Judge Motley highlighted, appellant “did not know the

amount that her new mortgage would increase after the refinancing” and “did not 

know the monthly payments she would be expected to pay[,]” matters that she 

reasonably would be expected to know about had she intended to undertake a mere 

refinancing. Moreover, she wrote a disbursement authorization that called for 

 

(...continued)

out in the text that follows this footnote, the evidence did not suffice for appellant 

to prevail under either standard.
13

funds to be given to Mr. Walker to cover six mortgage payments. As Judge 

Motley reasonably observed, “it would be unusual for [appellant as a borrower at a 

refinancing] to give money to . . . a cosigner[] to pay six months of her mortgage 

payments.” As Judge Motley emphasized, the evidence was also that appellant 

signed “at least four documents” of which “[e]ven a cursory review” would “lead 

to the conclusion that the transaction Ms. Moore was engaged in was the sale of 54 

Rhode Island Avenue, and not a refinancing.” On this record, the court reasonably 

rejected appellant’s claim that she “did not understand that she was selling her 

home to Mr. Walker.” 

Accordingly, we discern no reason to disturb the trial court’s finding that 

appellant failed to prove that she relied on a false representation about the nature of 

the closing transaction. Appellant has “fallen short of proving that a finding of . . .

fraud [in the inducement] is mandated by the evidence, or that no impartial trier of 

fact could reasonably find otherwise.” Allen v. District of Columbia Bd. of 

Elections & Ethics, 663 A.2d 489, 496 (D.C. 1995).
14

III.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the trial court is

Affirmed.