Court Opinion

ID: 9664437
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:19:01.130074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:06.406419
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion but I am unconvinced that under the statutory scheme permitting deficiency judgments we should recognize any waiver. I will not iterate all the cases in which this Court has held that these Statutes are viewed as debtor-protection legislation; many of them are cited in the majority opinion.1 We have, therefore, fairly consistently construed the provisions affecting the mortgagor’s protection against deficiency judgments strictly in favor ’ of the mortgagor. E.g., First State *170Bank v. Anderson, 452 N.W.2d 90 (N.D.1990).
I agree with the majority that “[t]he rights and defenses granted debtors by the anti-deficiency judgment law would be largely illusory if a prospective creditor could compel a prospective debtor to waive them at the time the mortgage is executed.” Unlike the majority, I am not convinced that the policies which prohibit waiver at the time of execution of the mortgage are not as applicable to contractual post-default waivers of a debtor’s procedural right under the anti-deficiency judgment law. To the contrary, I believe adverse circumstances which beset the mortgagor at the time of foreclosure increase, rather than decrease, the concern that the waiver of rights may not be an equal bargain and therefore not voluntary and intentional. If that concern is a part of the public policy which prohibits waiver at the time of execution of the mortgage, it seems to me that concern is even more acute at the time of foreclosure.
Finally, the anti-deficiency judgment statutes are a rather closely meshed set of procedures. Once the parties are permitted to eliminate some part of that interlocked scheme, it requires more than judicial quickstep to implement what is left of the procedures. I am not sure we can or should attempt to do so.
I agree there is a long-recognized public policy of encouraging settlements of controversies between the parties. In this particular area in which our Legislature has so closely defined the rights of the parties and the precise procedures to be followed, I believe that policy must give way to the more specific policy holding those who would obtain deficiency judgments to the letter of the law, as enacted by the Legislature and construed by this Court.
Parties to a mortgage are, of course, free to settle any differences. Once that settlement veers from the procedures established to obtain a deficiency judgment, the courts should not enforce only a portion of the deficiency judgment statutes at the risk of reducing the statutory rights and protections granted the mortgagor.

. A review of the history of the anti-deficiency judgment statutes and the spirit in which they were enacted are to be construed is set forth in this Court's opinion in First State Bank of Cooperstown v. Ihringer, 217 N.W.2d 857 (N.D.1974).