On Monday morning, I started my week ready to do battle with all the insanity and nonsense that is regularly pulled by the banks and their attorneys. It’s like groundhog day and it makes me furious to make the same arguments over and over and over again. I am not a “FREE HOUSE” attorney. I want to resolve cases in practical and constructive ways. I feel an obligation to work with the opposing party and to try to hammer out compromise for my clients. But the banks are not willing to work with Americans.
The same banks that took billions of dollars from taxpayers are not willing to work with their benefactors to negotiate good faith solutions. And that makes me angry. Day after day, week after week, month after month and now year after year, it’s the same damn frustrating story. The banks are bullies and they are pushing around the very people that saved their collective arses.
Legislators, policy makers and uniformed loudmouths blame borrowers, blame defense attorneys and even blame our courts and judges for the slow pace of foreclosures and the chaos that clogs our courtrooms. Everyone…and not just these people…need to wake up and understand that the banks have got to be held to account first for the reckless policies that got all this mess started and then for their abject failures.
The courts are owned by The People of this country, not the corporations. It’s long time that Americans stand up and demand that these reckless corporations stop abusing our courts and stop abusing the taxpayers that they haul into courts.
We need to support our courts. As lawyers especially, we need to demand properly funded courts that serve the larger good. The citizens of Pinellas County in particular need to understand just how hard the elected judges work and how, time and time again, these judges push lawyers through their paces and in doing so, elevate the profession in the middle of this mess.
But about this story…I was in the courtroom the morning of this hearing….I watched it unfold…it was more frustrating than words can even describe. The defendant there was not a deadbeat….not by any stretch of the imagination…this is a guy who has probably worked his butt off 24 hours a day for his whole life…only to be pushed around by the banks….good for him for fighting back….
Here is his story:
Saji Mathew missed the Oct. 12 mortgage payment on the Mobil gas station he co-owns.
On Oct. 13, he took the money to the bank, thinking that would make things right.
He tried to make his November and December payments as well. But each time, BB&T kicked back his money.
Ten months later, Mathew is still trying to pay. In circuit court on Tuesday, he offered BB&T $50,000, the total amount due since October.
BB&T didn’t want the money.
