The Donald (Trump) gets around his mortgage, why can’t his homeowners?
Donald Trump filed a lawsuit in Chicago to be relieved from his payments to Deutsche Bank, based on a ‘Force Majure’ clause in his loan documents. This clause ‘allows the borrower to delay completion of the building if construction is delayed by things like riots, floods or strikes. That clause has a catchall section covering “any other event or circumstance not within the reasonable control of the borrower,” and Trump figures that lets him out, even though construction is continuing.
He wants a state judge in New York to order the bank to delay efforts to collect the loan until “a reasonable time” after the financial crisis ends.
Deutsche Bank thinks the idea that an economic downturn should free people from the obligation to pay their debts is laughable.
The Donald agrees, in that he does not want everyone to be treated in the same way. When Floyd Norris asked him if he would let remorseful buyers walk away from contracts to buy condominiums at pre-depression prices, he said he would not. “They don’t have a force majeure clause,” he explained.
It pays to be rich, doesn’t it? To be able to add clauses to contracts that protect you, but not to allow the same protection to people who buy from you. There is a bible story about a lender who can’t pay his own debt to the king… The king forgives the debt, the lender goes home and tries to collect from someone poorer than he, the king hears and blows his top, throwing the man he forgave into prison for not sharing the loan forgiveness.
The Donald should be offering leniency to his purchasers if he’s going to argue for his own release.
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