Forget about The Constitution, forget about The Bill of Rights, a far more important document exists in this country and it’s called….The Allonge!
Those other old and forgotten documents are just, well, old and forgotten. Relics. Memories. Pesky annoyances that get in the way of the real thing of today and that is…The Efficient Flow of Commerce. The allonge is actually an old, old thing…older in fact than those other two old things that we should all stop talking so much about. The allonge sat around in an abandoned neighborhood at the intersection of law and commerce, forgotten and unused, never spoken of by judges and scarcely mentioned in any statute or the Uniform Commercial Code anywhere in the country until some brilliant mind in the Department of Commerce, Division of Securitization decided to drive through the rough section of town, past the whinos and blown out buildings and pick up that cast off old man called Allonge and take him for a ride.
And one hell of a ride it’s been.
The one widely circulated bit of scholarship on the subject Getting Attached Do your legal search and research high and low, all across the country and the above document is about all you’re gonna find. Not many opinions and those that do exist all head back to the same place…Black’s Law Dictionary…and the definition of allonge.
The key part, the essential element of the magical power of the allonge is that it was only ‘sposed to be used when there was no space on the note to make an endorsement….but that has not stopped the Sorcerers of Securitization from just totally ignoring this essential element of the Allonge and conjuring up one page hanging allonges and just dropping them in court files all over this country.
By now we all know what’s going on. At first the Dark Side didn’t even bother with getting the original promissory notes…..any old Affidavit of Lost Note would do….never mind that most of these Affidavits did not comply with the essential factual requirements of an Affidavit of Lost Note…namely personal knowledge that the affiant lost the note…most affidavits merely state, “The note is lost” and then some add for good measure, “Whoopsie!”
Then some pesky attorneys started asking questions about these affidavits and where the notes were and things started changing….First, foreclosures just ground to a halt….all across the country. Maybe part of it has to do with the inexplicable comments made by the Florida Mortgage Banker’s Association when they admitted the industry went about destroying original notes. Huh? You did what? You Destroyed Original Notes? What a Hoot! What a Gas….Read More Here!
On and then there’s all those admissions in cases like Kemp v. Countrywide describing how the Big Shot Banks just ignored all the fundamental law and rules on original notes.
But back to the Allonge. Oh the powerful and mighty Allonge.
But what’s really the point of all this? What do it matter? Does it Really Madder? Well, yeah, it really does.
These ain’t just technicalities that don’t mean ‘nuttin. The purpose behind original notes and chain of custody and endorsements is to protect against fraud and abuse and to ensure that the financial services industry is not cheating….(They couldn’t possibly be cheating or lying…could they?) We can trust Goldman…and BofA….and JPMorgan….can’t we?
The Den of Thieves commonly known as Wall Street would not possibly pledge the same original notes into multiple trusts, thereby increasing the value of each pledge many times over…would they? They wouldn’t do this even if they knew they were totally unregulated and it would be nearly impossible to catch for years and years down the road….would they?
Remember that the Rules of Evidence (used ever so occasionally in the context of foreclosure) and the Uniform Commercial Code are fundamentally intended to protect against fraud and to protect all parties in commercial transactions. “All parties” in the context of such a big part of our entire economy includes not just the homeowner and lender in a foreclosure transaction…no siree…it includes the entire world which should be able to depend on an accurate and trustworthy financial system….do you think we have an accurate and trustworthy financial system?
Finally, consider all of that in the context of a case where these issues are being expertly litigated. Very, very good stuff here….
