No attorney that holds a Bar card should ever walk into a courtroom unless she respects the awesome power of our once respected legal system. Now that awe and respect extends whether you’re walking into county or traffic court straight on up to marching into state, appellate or federal court. Proportionally, the small claims case is just as important to the middle class client as the multimillion dollar case is to the corporate client and that county court judge is cloaked in the very same robe of respect and tradition as the robe worn by the judges of the United States Supreme Court.
And any good attorney will tell you that no matter how many times she’s walked into a courtroom, no matter how familiar she is with the judge and the case, the preparation and the anxiety level and the intensity rises”¦you don’t disrespect the court and you don’t short change your client no matter how familiar you are”¦.you prepare for every hearing like you’re walking into the Master Chief’s office to have your arse handed to you. (Again) And if you’re lucky enough and things go your way, you just count all that preparation as time well spent.
Now over the last several months, I’ve been obsessing over the fact that the general public is losing respect not just for our entire system of government, but for our nation’s court and justice system in particular. And why should they not? It is beyond dispute and frankly not subject to any debate anymore, that our nation and our government at all levels exist primarily to serve the interests of the corporate masters that control each and every component of our government, from the President of the United States of America, right down to the city council member and every vote whore in between. Those corporate ” people” write the checks that keep the suits in office and it’s those ” people” they serve, not you and me. ” Our” courts likewise have been co-opted by the same insidious forces that have corrupted the rest of our nation, although I don’t think the turn is quite so direct or the corruption quite so dramatic. Most judges aren’t necessarily ” bought” (although every student of American decline must watch ” Hot Coffee”) and while most are not directly corrupted, there is an insidious incursion into our legal system caused by the overpowering, never ending appearance of the corporate cast of characters that form a line outside every single courtroom in this country every single day. I should think such familiarity would build contempt, but in my experience in foreclosure courtrooms, the familiarity has bred consent, not contempt. Consent to a new and dangerous theory of jurisprudence that laws and rules should not, indeed cannot, be applied against the corporate interests that keep the courthouse lights on.
In a more honest time we called campaign finance corruption or bribery. Today, our United States Supreme Court gave us a euphemism called, ” Citizens United” which meant that corporations could spend all the money they cared to in order to create the most brilliant propaganda the world has ever seen. Taking it one step further, Mitt Romney announced that corporations are people. Which naturally made me wonder, ” Do pro-life people think that the most anti pro-life corporations should not be aborted before they have the chance to grow and spread their hateful messages?
Our politics are a reflection of who we are and they reflect that we as a nation are in danger, grave danger. (Is there any other kind?) I’m afraid most of America has frankly become too dumb or drugged or lazy to recognize the peril we’re in and step away from the mushroom cloud. And please, don’t take offense, I’m not talking about you”¦.I’m talking about everyone else. If you don’t yet entirely agree with me, take a look around you next time you’re in the grocery store or out at the county fair”¦.You know you agree”¦and if you’ve got half sense, you should be terrified.
Americans sat back and watched our factories be dismantled piece by piece. We watched as roads were sold off then prisons were sold, then hospitals and school systems. Public assets sold off like a crack addict empties out mom’s house after she dies. And when our jobs were gone, we slinked off to collect the unemployment check while the rest of the jobs were slowly packed into carts and shipped abroad rather than stick around to protest or to fight for the next job or protect the next dying industry. Ross Perot was right, it is a big sucking sound”¦.that’s been sucking for two decades now. Well there’s just not much left to suck anymore.
But now, let’s focus for just a moment on the court system. I like the picture that showed our nation’s Supreme Court justices with corporate logos stitched onto their robes. I like that picture in a dark and sardonic way. You cannot really appreciate how insidious the corporate incursion into our courtrooms is until you’ve entered the gladiator pit with the corporate warriors, suited up in their modern day loincloths, the dark suit, white shirt, red tie. And they don’t carry swords or shields, they carry litigation cases. And frankly they don’t even carry them anymore. Today, they wheel them in, a devolution that’s just pathetic. If you can’t handle the weight of your own bag, you just shouldn’t be hauling it into a courtroom”¦.but that’s just me.
And out of those bags spews the result of the countless hours of legal research their assembled gang along with their support staff and armies back at the office have assembled”¦billed away at $600 per hour. And their law largely says that they are the law. As much as I want to beat back the massing oppressive forces, as much as I want to point out in page line and verse exactly where the judge is wrong, delivering a counter punch when the body blows start coming, I’m forced to confront the awful, sickening reality that the game is stacked completely against us”¦.they’ve all been writing this law for hundreds of years, and they didn’t write the law to help you or I. They took away the counterpunch before I could even wind up.
Today our laws, like our elected leaders and our court system, exist to serve the corporate masters that own and control every aspect of our lives. As envisioned our court system and our judges were to serve as a bulwark against the dangerous incursions of the unrestrained, but then just think of the courage and the resourcefulness that would have taken from our judges. The cases that survive and thus the cases that make reported decisional law are the cases the dark side wishes to keep alive. All the rest get pounded into submission or snuffed out if they present any real resistance. And so after many successive years, we’re left with the law written as they want it.
First they wrote the laws, then they wrote themselves out of any consequence. Then they starved and choked our court system until our judges were too strained and stretched to see anything but their law. The final act is coming down from above with NDAA and SOPA, now CISPA and strip searches and felony protest and attacks against the few who are willing to still let out a whimper. They’re coming for you too, but for many they’ve already come. Too many are already imprisoned, locked deep away in the catacombs of debt and depression and hopelessness”¦.all energy and resistance and strength sapped away long ago.
It all makes the small victories that much more rewarding, seeing judges who still carry that flame”¦and especially those courageous and bold few who hold the flame high so it burns like a torch. Yes, they do exist, these judges who still see a light and who fan the flame. They frankly are all we have left in this world, they are and remain the keepers of the flame.
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Matt Weidner and the lawyers of Weidner Law practice exclusively in the state and federal courts located within Florida. Any information provided on this website is for general, consumer education alone and no attorney client relationship of any kind is established between any consumer and the law firm unless a formal retainer agreement is executed between the law firm and client.
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I have seen enough appeals dismissed by a PCA, even on appeals where the court was obviously fundamentally wrong, and the appeal well argued. To restore our faith in the courts, and the ability of the system of court’s to correct errors need to do away with PCA’s.
If appellate courts are going to make what appears to be ill considered rulings make them put the reason for the decision in a written opinion. – The argument that it would lead to more conflicting opinions is tosh, since the rational for a PCA is the statute, rule or existing case law is well established, which means another opinion saying the same thing would not confuse the system.
Our belief in justice, which requires us to believe justice is avalible and errors by the court will be corrected, will only be restored when PCA’s are abolished. NO MORE PCAs !!
No more golfing afternoons for Appellate judges. Make them clock in, do 40 hours, read the briefs and issue written opinions. That’s their job. NO MORE PCA’s.
No lawyer should have to be in the position of telling their client, you had a very good case, but you lost and I CANNOT EXPLAIN WHY.
or worse, trying to explain an appellate decision that rewrites the laws to favor the banks.
Who is the Big Money that Really Controls the World?
“What if all global leaders’ suits and any news/products associated with huge global events were required to be labeled with corporate sponsorship as are the racing jumpsuits and racing cars of Nascar drivers? Below are two satirical videos with suggestions as to how people’s consciousness can be raised about exactly who is sponsoring today’s music, media and news as well as who is sponsoring various wars, Presidents, Prime Ministers, banks and education institutions. Amazingly a few people that have viewed these videos did not understand their satirical nature and believed that my proposed solutions were of a serious nature. Maybe these same people wrote the publisher of George Orwell’s ” Animal Farm” to complain that Orwell’s book was unrealistic because animals can’t really talk.”
Posted: Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 by SmartKnowledgeU.Com at his Blog; Read more site: https://www.theundergroundinvestor.com/2012/04/who-is-the-big-money-that-really-controls-the-world/
This is a key issue of judicial accountability. From my observations in the jurisdictions in which I practice, an appellate decision that gives creditors more rights under the law than they had going into the appeal or takes away the rights that the homeowner had before the appeal is likely to be “published.” Yet, it seems that every opinion favorable to the protection of homeowners has been “unpublished.” The expense of briefing an appeal goes up because the law available to guide the very court which entered the “unpublished” opinion on almost identical facts remains thin, requiring the re-litigation of similar issues on appeal again and again and allowing for unpredictable results.
When lawyers cannot analyze the facts, apply the law and determine the likely result in a case or on appeal, lawyers for the common citizen are rendered ineffectual. Are we supposed to tell our clients that the law and the facts support their claims and defenses, yet they are unlikely to prevail in court because their opponent claims to be a “bank” and that every perceived defect in the homeowner’s performance is a breach of contract, whereas intentional efforts to put them in default and to prevent them from curing the default will likely not be interpreted as unclean hands and a bar to the equitable remedy of foreclosure? We cannot concede the equitable remedy to fraud committed in the shadow and bailed- out banking system.
What we need to emphasize is that the remedy of foreclosure is an equitable remedy and that the “banks'” intentional acts to force or create a default renders the foreclosure remedy unavailable as a violation of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing imputed into every contract arising under the Uniform Commercial Code. We need to prove that the “bank” breached the contract first in every possible case where a breach arises. The financial system used our clients’ signatures on notes and the mortgage collateral to create securities for sale to the “secondary market” investors in which the judges, court officials, public servants, legislators, etc. are participants (to say nothing of foreign nations.)
None of my clients ever consented to the creation of securities using their debt obligations and homes. They consented to sale of the loans, not to the creation of securities and sale of the securities to investors. This is not a fine distinction. The sale of the loan implies that you will know who the buyer of the loan is. No one consented to be deceived as to the ownership of their loan obligations which was concealed through the two-pronged “endorsement in blank” and “MERS as nominee” scheme. No one agreed to be serviced by a predator who was actively seeking to create a default in order to benefit from the additional fees attendant to the servicing of a defaulted loan. No one agreed to the change in the terms of their loan by private entities’ policies and procedures not disclosed in the note or the mortgage (my current favorite from the Sjolander deposition: robo-stamping by whomever might have access to the stamp by virtue of an undisclosed Power of Attorney to a corporate entity.”
These loan contracts were fraudulently induced ab initio. It has taken us almost 6 years of research and reliance on the hard work of other lawyers, pro se homeowners and concerned citizens to scratch the surface of a fraud with a presumed 6 year statute of limitations. Concealment of the fraud ordinarily extends the statute of limitations. Have any of us gotten to the bottom of the fraud yet? We are very close. My recommendation is to plead what we know and continue the process of shared discovery. There was fraud in the inducement into a contract about which key terms were concealed from one of the parties–the borrower.
It is the fraud in the inducement that the courts most fear. Instinctively, even the lowest common denominator on the bench will know that there is something inherently wrong with these contracts from the very moment the homeowners’ real signatures are placed on the notes and mortgages. Did anyone agree to have an endorsement in blank put on a note in a mail room regardless of who owned the note? Did anyone agree to have MERS allow the assignment of mortgages to whomever paid $25.00 to have a robo-signer named one of its officers and sign for both the original lender and the purported purchaser of the loan, which is usually the servicer with only servicing rights?
What is really chilling is that there is no provable chain of ownership of the notes and mortgages. We should not lose any of these cases at law or equity. To protect the fatally flawed “financial system” the case law has to keep morphing in every case. That is how you get per curiam affirmances in Florida and we get unpublished decisions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The law has been morphing on obscure facts and misinterpretations of law to keep the lid on the atrocity whereby citizens can lose their homes to entities which have no claim to the equitable remedy of foreclosure.
Damages for the alleged breach are not enough for these false claimants. They want the homes and they want to be paid for the losses they created when they created the defaults and prevented the defaults from being cured (by failure to record timely payments, refusing payments, charging inspection fees and for forced place insurance and attorneys fees for wrongful foreclosures, denying loan modifications, etc.)
Perhaps the best thing that we have going for this nation’s economic re-stabilization are the courageous homeowners and the few lawyers who have been working together to share the discovery of the elements of this massive fraud. As Rep. Marcy Kaptur said in February, 2009 (paraphrased): “Stay in your homes. Don’t you leave. When they say that they have your paper up on Wall Street,
I am telling you that they do not have it.” It is more than 3 years later and Rep. Kaptur is now being believed. The fraud of robo-stamping is the attempt to make it appear that the paperwork gives standing to the servicer and conceals the owner of the obligation from the homeowner and the courts.
Our weakness is in being divided. The one case at a time model is incredibly challenging. Each case has some individual facts. We need to have a central clearing house of all written discovery and requests for production of documents, all depositions taken to date, all case law for each state and form pleadings. We currently lack the capital to do this, but we need to work on that. Remember, our opponents usually have direct access to the discount windows at the Federal Reserve Banks. We need to capitalize our resistence. Let’s make lemonade out of the lemons in the JOBS Act and crowd-fund a foreclosure defense platform. It can be done.
Can you tell us what a PCA is or what the abbreviation stands for? thanks.
per curiam affirmed….the appellate court just says, “lower court was correct” without giving a single bit of analysis or opinion…it’s just a dodge really.