Is it Ethical to Take Money From a Client to Defend a Foreclosure Case?

I recently took a foreclosure case to “trial” and the experience has me seriously questioning whether it’s ethically proper for me to continue accepting money from clients to defend foreclosure trials, in some instances.

In this particular instance, I had spent at least three years defending the case.  As with most of my cases, I had many, many more hours into the case than I had been paid…but I always work with my clients, and as the case progressed towards trial, I was increasingly confident that we would have a favorable outcome.  My belief in the favorable outcome came primarily as a result of the plaintiff continually missing important deadlines, not even showing up for hearings, and me obtaining several rulings from the court that should have prevented the plaintiff from presenting a winning case.  Specifically, I spent years asking the plaintiff to produce the records that it would need to show my client was in default and that he owed the plaintiff the money.  After repeated motions, the judge finally entered a series of orders, with one in particular that provided, “plaintiff will not be permitted to introduce records or evidence that have not been previously provided.”  This is a fairly standard sanction for abuse of discovery or failure to provide discovery in civil litigation.  Theoretically at least in all civil litigation, parties are not permitted to hide evidence….especially when that evidence is specifically demanded…and then, at trial, spring it on the other party.  But this is precisely what happened in this particular “trial”.  And the evidence that was sprung at the last minute, and in violation of the court’s own order, was in fact the most incredibly improper evidence I’ve ever seen in all my years of practice.  Page after page, line after line blacked out completely….by the court’s own recognition, nearly 20% of the lines in the multi-page document were blacked out.  I objected furiously, repetitively and incredulously.

Your honor, how can you possibly allow them to introduce and rely on this document, we have absolutely no idea what’s underneath the black lines….in fact, we have reason to believe the information under those black lines supports our legitimate defense that my client is not in default and that other wrongdoing occurred.

I’m going to admit the document.

But your honor, they don’t even have a copy of the document unredacted to show you what’s underneath the black lines.

I’m going to admit the document.

But your honor, they’ve flagrantly and blatantly tampered with the evidence and hidden from view critical information.

I’m going to admit the document.

This, quite unfortunately, is the state of affairs in courtrooms today.  A broad public policy decision has been made that any and all conduct of the banks and their attorneys is permissible, “our” courts must get to work throwing families out into the streets so that these homes can be turned back over to hedge funds and investors.  And it really doesn’t matter at all what other conduct lies intertwined within the case.  It doesn’t matter what the banks or their attorneys did on the long and winding journey to a foreclosure trial.  After all, they paid their settlement money which has been funneled directly to the courts and is now being used to implement and execute the  foreclosure “trials” that are occurring.

Oh sure, consumers can still find many fair courtrooms where rules and the law will be respected.  Foreclosure defense attorneys will still unleash strategies and defenses that will produce good outcomes for clients, but we must all recognize that our nation’s court system has taken a dramatic and terrifying turn into lawlessness and fascism, believing that their primary role and function is to serve the interests of banks, corporations and an overriding economic and social purpose that transcends what we knew as the Rule of Law.

This phenomena is not just on display in foreclosure courts, but it is especially apparent in foreclosure courtrooms.  Those facts that support the argument that fascism prevails in this country are so dramatically on display especially given the fact that money paid as a direct result of bank crimes is being used to pay, quite directly and explicitly, for the very courtrooms that are being used to return the property that was the subject of the crimes back to the banks.  Part of the $25 billion that was agreed to as part of the National Mortgage Settlement was supposed to be used specifically to “help” consumers who were the target of bank crimes and abuses.  That money instead has been funneled directly and specifically to fund courts that are unilaterally setting trials and then capriciously turning the property back over to the banks, trampling on due process and obliterating the Rule of Law in the process.  It gross, it’s reckless, it’s abusive and it will have long term negative consequences.

Should citizens, any citizen, have any respect for a government that is so clearly and dramatically working against them, in service to this new economic, social and legal order which defines “justice” as “whatever it takes to reward the corporations and banks that fund the court system”?

Clearly, they should not.  And right now, those citizens that see the court system functioning in this matter merely have front row seats to the much darker, far more sinister and monstrously dangerous environment in which we live.

America’s courts were supposed to be the check, the balance, the protection against tyranny, against abuse, against fascism.

When our courts turn their backs against The People, as indeed they have, these are in fact dire times for us all.

America is in fact, in distress.