07/27/2026
In November 2021, John Bonomi Jr., a retired lawyer, paid $5.5 million for a 5,000-square-foot mansion perched on a coastal bluff in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The views were extraordinary. The location was not.
The house sat on an eroding cliff above Cape Cod Bay, inside the Cape Cod National Seashore, on land that had been losing ground to the ocean for decades. The bluff had already retreated more than 50 feet in the ten years before Bonomi bought it. Coastal professionals estimated the erosion rate at between 3.8 and 5.6 feet per year. This was not a secret. It had been the subject of local headlines, legal battles, and failed attempts to build a protective seawall going back years before Bonomi ever signed the papers.
In February 2025, three and a half years after the purchase, Bonomi had the mansion demolished. The cliff edge had crept close enough that allowing it to collapse into the ocean on its own would have created an environmental hazard. The demolition cost an additional $250,000.
The mortgage, however, did not disappear with the house. It runs until December 2051, at roughly $21,053 a month, on land where a building no longer stands, above a bluff that continues to erode into the sea.
So Bonomi sued JPMorgan Chase.
His lawsuit, filed in federal court, makes two central arguments. First, that the bank should never have approved a mortgage on a property whose erosion risk was widely documented public record, and that any proper due diligence would have flagged the loan as inappropriate. Second, and more unusually, that he was suffering from an uncontrollable manic episode due to his Bipolar I Disorder at the time of purchase, and that the bank either knew or should have known he lacked the mental capacity to enter into the agreement.
JPMorgan Chase is vigorously denying both claims, stating it acted in good faith and followed reasonable commercial lending standards. The case is active in federal court and no liability has been established.
