Re: Loan Dispute

You made a silly and dangerous assumption. The lender's deposit may well have been illegal, but your failure to look into it gives you --unclean hands--. You are obligated to return the funds as "money had and received to the use of the plaintiff," in my opinion. This is a catch-all for, "Finders is not always keepers."

Let's be real here. What adult sees a $27,000 credit to his or her bank account and makes no effort to be SURE it was correctly credited? What adult fails to realize that electronic transfers can be tracked?

This is not a Readers' Digest Condensed Book sent to your home without your request, which the law presumes to be a gift. $27,000.00 is more than enough to put you on inquiry notice. Having failed to inquire, you now have $27,000 to repay. Had you inquired, you could and should have returned it, and perhaps gotten the lender in some bad press for its "mistake." You do not, as I see things, have that defense at this point.

Long ago, when I was a college sophomore, the phone company lost track of a whole bank of dorm room phones for a while, and did not send long distance bills. When they finally DID, I ponied up about $50.00 for three months of normal long distance. Some of my dorm-mates ponied up thousands that they racked up in the hope that they would never be billed. The courts assisted in that. Their "student status" was NO DEFENSE. It was instead viewed as proof of sufficient intelligence and education to KNOW THAT THEY HAD TO PAY FOR WHAT THEY GOT.

I wish you the best of luck.