Matt Weidner – Fighting With The American People

Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure mill’

You’d have to be out of your mind to by a home after a foreclosure sale.  Courts can ignore issues like standing and capacity and fraud and abuse of homeowners, but at the end of the line if the process is so corrupted and fatally flawed that the market will not purchase the properties, what’s the point of continuing with all this slop?

Well, for any brave investor or soul that thinks they might want to jump into the toxic stew that is fraudclosure and make their killing buying REO property, read the cautionary tale that is Bevilacqua. The question before the Supreme Court was this:

Whether a person who holds title to property by
virtue of a recorded deed, but whose title is clouded
by a possihle adverse claim due to deficiencies in a
prior foreclosure in his chain of title, has standing
to bring a petition to invalidate the claims of prior owners?

In English:

If a foreclosure mill or bank committed fraud or otherwise engaged in improper conduct (like robosigning) to get a foreclosure and I purchase the home, am I safe from claims by the prior owner?

The answer is…..NO.  If you buy a home and anyone played games or cut corners along the way, you’re out of luck.  Or as the headline from Bloomberg Screams:

Buyers Can’t Sue After Bad Foreclosure Sale!

A Massachusetts man who bought property in a faulty foreclosure sale isn’t the true owner and so doesn’t have the right to sue over it, the state’s high court ruled.

The Supreme Judicial Court, which in January found that banks can’t foreclose on a house if they don’t own the mortgage, went one step further in a closely watched case and said a sale after that foreclosure doesn’t transfer the property. Therefore, the buyer couldn’t bring his court action against a previous owner, the court ruled. (Full Bloomberg Article Here)

SJC-10880_01_Appellant_Bevilacqua_Brief

Full Case Docket

This nation is collapsing under the weight of a flawed, fraudulent and criminal economic and political system. The epicenter is indeed Wall Street, that den of sin and inequity where the wealth and wages of an entire nation are sucked in and concentrated then swirled around before it all goes disappearing down some drain and flushed into a world unknown.

We don’t know where the money goes or why because the traders and the bankers and the hedge fund managers and executives consistently used a portion of their ill-earned gains to pay off the elected and appointed “leaders” and convince them either not to inquire where the money was going or to accept absurd and/or complex explanations that defy our understanding.  Geithner, Paulson, Bernake, Johnson, Bush, Bush, Clinton and every elected member of Congress and every elected official who sits in any seat in this country.  They are all responsible.  At some point in time perhaps some of them understood where this was going and what they were doing.  Hank Paulson spent his entire career at Goldman Sachs and Geithner was born, bred and baptized by the banks…no surprise that their worldview is entirely focused on supporting these institutions.

And what’s going on closer to home, down where all this trouble manifests itself in our daily lives?  More unemployment, extraordinary inflation, a further collapsing economy and all of this laid on top of a seething anger and discontent that is bubbling all across this country.  It is beyond dispute now that extraordinary abuses of our financial, economic and legal system were occurring all across this state….we see some people taking to the streets in New York.  But Florida?  It’s been years now since the public first learned of all the investigations.  And what has come of those investigations?  Nothing.  They all still walk free….it’s time to wake up.

A former colleague, friend and top manager of fallen foreclosure titan David J. Stern complains in a new deposition that she was laid off via email, lied to about her position in the law firm and ignored when she voiced concerns about the feverish pace at which foreclosures were processed.

Cheryl Samons, the former second-in-command of Stern’s Plantation-based firm, was deposed in April in relation to a class-action lawsuit filed by former Stern employees. The suit alleges workers were terminated last fall without the 60 days notice required by federal law .

A Miami federal judge approved class-action status for the case Monday.

The deposition, which was posted on a foreclosure defense attorney’s blog Thursday, offers some insight into how the firm grew to become the largest so-called “foreclosure mill” in the state before falling apart amid allegations of robo-signing and the announcement of the Florida attorney general’s investigation. Palm Beach Post

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris pulled out of settlement negotiations with the nation’s biggest banks over alleged foreclosure abuses, calling the proposed deal “inadequate for California homeowners.”

The decision by Ms. Harris delivers a serious blow to efforts by the Obama administration and 50 state attorneys general to forge a $25 billion settlement with the nation’s largest banks over “robo-signing” and other questionable foreclosure practices.

Her actions follow the withdrawal of New York from the talks. Without the participation of California and New York in the negotiations, banks will be far less likely to agree to the multibillion dollar settlement that federal and state officials have spent months pursuing.

California remained a critical constituent for any deal because it has more borrowers who are underwater, or owe more than their homes are worth, than any other state. California also has more borrowers that are behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure than any other state but Florida. Wall Street Journal

For an instant, a brief moment in time, Floridians and consumers across this country had public officials and fighters who were standing up to the banks and institutions and fighting for the good of the American people.  But all of that has changed now.  The fighters are getting snuffed out, one by one.

The most dramatic example is firing of two attorneys who worked for Florida’s Attorney General, Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson.  No one knows just how far their investigations took them, but what we do know is they had issued countless subpoenas to the foreclosure mills, the process servers and other companies and parties that are responsible for Fraudclosure.  Who knows just how much information they had collected, how many crimes were documented?  What we do know is that these investigations did not sit well with the people that are now in power in this state.  In the wake of the disclosures of wrongdoing, one Senator (Joe Negron-R) had the gall and audacity to suggest that “foreclosure mill” was not a bad term at all, it merely meant that the law firm was fast and efficient.

Well all of that is done now, I’m sure the investigations are dead.  How many hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer dollars are wasted now because these promising investigations were just snuffed out?  These attorneys and fighters, shown to the door?  But the facts and the information they uncovered cannot hide forever.  If you’re in the Broward County area, and you’re in foreclosure, you should hire these two attorneys to fight for you….they know where the skeletons are buried.  As for Florida’s Attorney General, I just hope voters have a decent memory and that this whole stinking episode becomes a big nail in the coffin of her young political career….from the Washington Post:

“It just came out of nowhere,” said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s economic crimes section for more than three years. “We were completely stunned.”

Less than a month before they were forced out, a supervisor cited their work as “instrumental in triggering a nationwide review of such practices.” Now, Edwards is convinced their sudden dismissals will have “a chilling effect” on those probes into the shoddy foreclosure practices that caused national outrage when they made headlines last fall.

WASHINGTONPOST

I was reviewing an affidavit of attorneys fees submitted by a foreclosure mill yesterday when something big struck me.  You see, the case law is very clear…no party can get attorney’s fees in any case unless there is an expert witness to testify that the amount of hours spent on the file was reasonable and that the hourly fee charged by the attorney claiming it is reasonable.  The affidavit provided by the mills even contains the factors which are clearly spelled out in Florida Supreme Court Case, Florida Patient Compensation Fund:

The factors to be considered by a court in making these determinations, as set forth in the opinion, are those factors enunciated in Rule 4-1.5 of the Florida Bar Code of Professional Responsibility.  They are as follows:

1.  The time and labor required, the novelty, complexity, and difficulty of the questions involved, and the skill requisite to perform the legal services properly;

2.  The likelihood that the acceptance of the particular employment will preclude other employment by the lawyer;

3.  The fee, or rate of fee, customarily charged in the locality for legal services of a comparable or similar nature;

4.  The significance of or amount involved in, the subject matter of the representation, the responsibility involved in the representation, and the results obtained;

5.  The time limitation imposed by the clients or by the circumstances and, as between attorney and client, any additional or special time demands or requests of the attorney by the client;

6.  The nature and length of the professional relationship with the client;

7.  The experience, reputation, diligence, and ability of the lawyer or lawyers performing the service and the skill, expertise, or efficience of effort reflected in the actual providing of such services; and

8.  Whether the fee is fixed or contingent, and, if fixed as to amount or rate, then whether the client’s ability to pay rested to any significant degree on the outcome of the representation.

Now here’s a real problem for all the mills and the robo signing attorney’s fee affiants……when the attorneys who are appearing in court don’t even have the case files with them, there ain’t no way these attorney fee “experts” have even seen the files, much less can they answer the questions above…THAT THEY ARE REQUIRED TO ANSWER ACCORDING TO THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT!

Here’s the thing that smacked me straight in the head yesterday.  Take the time to read the foreclosure mill’s affidavit of reasonable attorney’s fee….in the form produced by one particular mill, the affidavit first quotes the case above, then it actually says…”I HAVE NOT EVEN REVIEWED THE FILE IN THIS CASE”.  The case they quote in one section of the affidavit requires an examination of the file, yet the right there smack dab within the affidavit itself, they swear under oath and tell you that they have not reviewed the file and thus they could not have complied with the Supreme Court directive.  There are many other significant problems with the affidavits of reasonable attorney’s fee that I’m holding back on until this gets fleshed out in a hearing, but let me give all of you a hint…..have you heard of the word, “Robo Signing”?

Well, keep that in mind when you’re looking at the affidavit of reasonable attorney’s fees that this is a piece of evidence filed in a court case….it matters.  It was signed by at least one attorney….probably two.  It was notarized…pay close attention to Chapter 117, Florida’s Notary Statute.  You will find that in most cases these affidavits violate…violate…violate….But who really cares, right?  I mean, everyone knows the mills are entitled to $1,200, right?  Well, remember the whole “Robo Signing” thing…..  Well, in attacking robo signed affidavits of attorneys fees, we have case law, statutes and the Rules of Professional Responsibility to focus in on…..USE THEM.

But wait….there’s more…..another thing…and it’s the best thing….it’s really quite wonderful.  Even if the serpents who are swearing for these mills before they sell their souls and create these inherently false affidavits…THE AFFIDAVITS ARE USELESS UNDER A PROPER CHALLENGE….THEY’RE NOT ADMISSABLE!

How’s that?  Whaddya say?  Not admissable?  Yup!  Just read the case law.  If the mills want their fees, they gotta have a real live, in the flesh expert in the courtroom to testify about the reasonableness of the fees…but don’t just take my word for it….the case law on this particular issue just below…

As if the country needed more proof of the outlaw behaviors of banks and their agents, The Baltimore Sun‘s Jamie Smith Hopkins reports that 1,000 or more Maryland deeds are likely forgeries, created by a foreclosure mill. A former notary from law firm Shapiro & Burson filed an affidavit with law enforcement and regulators charging that the attorneys’ signatures on the deeds and other important documents were forgeries signed at the express direction of management. The affidavit attached sample signatures.

I had my first experience in a Lee County courtroom today where one attorney’s job appeared to be to make excuses for all sorts of problems…after all, her firm was withdrawing from 150,000 foreclosure cases all across the state…..sorry bout all the problems, the court orders violated, the chaos it was causing….oopsie!  I give her credit, she danced right along and the everything seemed to go her way…good for her!  Oh, wait a minute, all of this chaos costs me and every taxpayer in the state of Florida money…total it all up and that’s millions of dollars.  Oh well, ignore all of that, we’ve got foreclosures to get through!

Now I see where the list of law firms on Fannie Maes’ Retained Counsel list for Florida is shrinking yet again…have a look at the list and see whether your favorite foreclosure mill is on board…Florida is on Page 4!

Fannie Mae Retained Counsel List