All across this state, homeowners and their attorneys are under attack.
By trial courts, increasingly by appellate courts and in some cases the Bar. My impression is that this is targeted attacks at the consumer justice attorneys who are very much doing the right thing, fulfilling their highest ethical obligations to The Temple of Law that we took an oath to serve.
One Florida’s foreclosure warriors was very much subjected to attack recently from an apellate court….See this article here:
After Miami foreclosure attorney Bruce Jacobs agreed to write an appellate brief for an ill colleague, he begged off making the oral argument before the Third District Court of Appeal in October.
Jacobs, who hosts “Debt Warriors with Bruce Jacobs” on WZAB, 880 AM The Biz, was smarting from an order to show cause issued by the appellate court earlier this year in another foreclosure case after a bank admitted not owning his client’s mortgage the day before oral argument.
The Third DCA, though, ended up accusing him of making frivolous arguments and threatened sanctions but has yet to follow through. Then in the foreclosure case he took as a favor, Jacobs caught the appellate court’s wrath again in a decision written by Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg.
She blamed the homeowners’ appellate attorneys for “defending an indefensible appeal,” cited “material misrepresentations” in the homeowners’ motion for final judgment filed by trial attorney Robert Lithman and found fundamental error by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jose M. Rodriguez in an opinion issued Nov. 20.
Rothenberg also was one of the judges who filed the order to show cause against Jacobs. He now wonders if the Third DCA is singling out foreclosure defense attorneys for vigorously defending homeowners.
“In 18 years of practicing law, this is the first practice area I’ve ever felt any backlash for making good faith arguments,” Jacobs said. “It’s not just me. Other attorneys have faced threats of sanctions for making good faith arguments in foreclosure appeals.”
