WOW! What an inspiration; there are probably tens of thousands of cases filed across this country before the Plaintiff managed to get the Assignment of Mortgage executed (or faked), and yet such post-filing assignments form the basis for foreclosure judgments.

Great job to this Pro Se Warrior, for getting this excellent outcome!  This is one of my favorite opinions in a long, long time because it shows that our courts are not the exclusive domain of attorneys…

STAND PROUD AND TALL!

11-01-17 – Final Order – Opinion-1

By: Alan Cohn

“TAMPA – The Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court today ordered judges across the state to stop closing their courtrooms to the public during foreclosure hearings.

The move by Chief Justice Charles Canady is in response to a growing chorus of complaints that banks are sometimes taking short cuts and using questionable documents in foreclosure cases.

It’s called the “Rocket Docket” and it was created by the Florida courts to deal with the deluge of foreclosure cases across the state.

In Pinellas and Pasco Counties alone, the courts say, there are a thousand new cases every month. There’s a back log of 31,000 foreclosure cases and one of them belongs to Ernie Hassell.

Hassell lost his job and now he’s losing his St. Petersburg home.

“To have all that and risk it just going up in vapor is certainly life altering,” Hassell says.

Adding insult to injury, Hassel is one of a growing number of people who are discovering the banks are allegedly re-creating the documents needed to get them out of their homes in some cases.

For instance, Hassell and his attorney believe this “Assignment of Mortgage” was created years after discovering the notary who stamped the document didn’t witness it being signed and she doesn’t know the people who signed it.

“Document Mills across the country are employing officers and agents that purport signing on behalf of corporations that have ceased to exist in many cases before the person signing today,” Hassell’s attorney, Matt Weidner says.”

Find the full story here on ABC Action News…

I’ve been receiving and sharing excellent information and thoughts that have been shared with me by pro se litigants…there are some very bright people out there that are raising some very good questions.  In most of my litigation cases, we’re still stuck trying to get the very basic information out of the Plaintiffs–haven’t even moved into substantive discovery in most cases.

On a percentage basis, something like 80% of my cases have failed at the MTD stage because the Plaintiffs are unable or unwilling to substantiate the most basic information.  I anxiously await the far off time when we might plumb the real depths of the garbage filed in our courts to see what real mischief has been created….but read this below and think about what it means if this pro-se guy is correct.  How many millions of dollars have been transferred into trusts that no one has any idea whatsoever who owns/controls or operates?  Has there ever been a time in American jurisprudence where such massive amounts of wealth have been transferred with no evidentiary basis to support the transfers?

WHAT’S THE POINT OF COURTS AND LAWS AND STATUES AND RULES IF THEY’RE ALL

WANTONLY IGNORED?

In my case the alleged trust is identified in the complaint as being “Soundview Home Loan Trust 2005-OPT4″ (Sounview). In documents filed with the SEC Soundview holds itself out to be registered/incorporated in the state of Delaware, and this within numerous of the SEC documents. In the fall of 2008 I made a request to the Delaware SOS and received a statement from that office stating Soundview does not exist. I made another request in February of 2010 and received a similar statement which says, in pertinent part:

“…a thorough search of the statutory trust records…indicate the “Soundview Home Loan Trust 2005-OPT4″, is not the title of a Delaware statutory trust or foreign statutory trust. And I do hereby further certify that the records of this office fail to show that a statutory trust of the above title has ever filed a certificate of trust in this department.”

In addition to searching the Delaware SOS records I’ve also done an online search for same in New York (the most likely alternative state of registration/incorporation). New York currently has no record of Soundview.

I have reviewed the Delaware statutes relating to both domestic and foreign trusts. It appears, in my laymans interpretation, that all statutory trusts must be registered. Such is found in: http://delcode.delaware.gov/title12/c038/index.shtml

So it seems I have been sued by, not only a currently nonexistent entity, but a never existent entity. Is it possible for a non, or never, existent entity to maintain a lawsuit? Is there a requirement that MBS trusts must be registered?

I’ve wanted to make some hay out of this but have been unable to determine if there is any hay to be made. Can you shed some light on this for me?

All parties to litigation are entitled to ask any relevant questions that relates to the litigation, but the foreclosure mills don’t want the secrets behind both their and their client’s business practices….apparently depositions like the Cottrell deposition that I posted earlier are not very helpful to the Foreclosure Mill’s cause.

You see when judges read these depos and get more information about the shady business practices, they might just stop or slow down to examine the garbage without any authority that’s being shifted under their noses every day.  I love paragraphs 7, 8 and 9 which essentially state that although we have placed an Assignment of Mortgage into the record, that piece of evidence means nothing so the court is not required to allow inquiry into it. Kinda like the Cullaro depositions that are “withdrawn” when counsel attempts to take their deposition…and seeks to insulate themselves from questions about their production….read on….

Motion+for+Protective+Order

MERS is a dark and shadowy corporate figure playing out behind the scenes in millions of foreclosures across the country.  For an entity that has played and continues to play such a critical role in the devastation of so many American’s lives, very little is known about the company, how it operates and their internal corporate structure.

Take the time to read this deposition and, while you won’t know all you need to know, quite a bit of the corporate structure and organization will be laid out, along with some very important fault lines exposed. For attorneys and advocates out there trying to figure out if you need a MERS deposition, this depo will show you why you do.

When they object, this deposition excerpted for your judge will help the judge to understand why testimony of a MERS agent, along with the purported “vice president” or whomever executes documents purportedly upon the lender’s behalf, is critical to establish whether proper authority ever existed for the purported MERS Assignment of Mortgage.

mersdepo1

mersdepo2

mersdepo3

mersdepo4

A child is walking along the beach where thousands of starfish have washed ashore.  Sadly, the starfish will all certainly die. As the child sees this, he begins picking up starfish one by one and tossing them back into the sea so they might live.  An old man watching this walks up to the boy and says, “Why are you wasting your time, there’s so many, you can’t make a difference.” To this cynical comment, the optimistic boy replied just as he was throwing a starfish back in the water…

“I just made a difference to that one.”

I thought about this as I sat in court today where judges were granting summary judgments one after the other in cases where homeowners are not represented by counsel.  For me the real tragedy is that such a small percentage of homeowners actually retain an attorney to defend themselves in foreclosure.  Based on the percentages of improper or defective assignments and endorsements Foreclosure Defense attorneys are finding in cases, a high percentage of these judgments are being granted based on improper evidence.

An even bigger problem is being created because apparently courts across the state are not following an important Rule of Judicial Administration that prohibits case evidence from being removed from the court file and case law dealing with negotiable instruments that demands these negotiable instruments be surrendered to the court after judgment.  These requirements are addressed in the recently issued Appellate Court Decision from the Fourth District, Johnston v. Hudlett.

Attached D’s Motion to Preserve Evidence in Court File – 4-8-10 here is a copy of a Motion I made and recently filed here in Pinellas County.  Courts simply should not be granting summary judgments of foreclosure based on the overwhelming weight of evidence we’re seeing from around the country which establishes a pattern or practice of improper behavior on the part of lenders and their attorneys.

Importantly, courts should not be releasing the evidence after the fact. I’ve drafted correspondence to the Chief Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit with the respectful request that the judge enter a standing Order prohibiting the clerks from releasing evidence after judgment.