Posts Tagged ‘foreclosure court’

South Florida’s Rocket Docket Rises Again

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Rocket The last thing I want to do is scold a judge. But once again foreclosure judges down in Miami-Dade are resorting to old habits, and there is no way I can stand by idly and let the rule of law be trampled on.

Because the rocket docket has risen from the grave and returned to South Florida. Don’t believe me?

The judge seeing the cases said it for me! He was quoted in the Miami Herald, calling his court a “rocket docket” and admitting he holds about 50 trials a day.

Courts across Florida have received hundreds of thousands of dollars to add judges and staff to their undermanned courtrooms. That’s good. But the response in Miami-Dade goes right back to pushing homeowners and lenders back onto an industrial pipeline.

It’s pure lunacy. Once again homeowners’ fundamental constitutional rights are being tossed aside by the Court in favor of expediency. So in other words, we are right back where we started.

Is there still a massive backlog clogging the foreclosure courts in Florida? Yes. Will clearing those cases off the docket help our economy move onward and upward?

Absolutely. But fixing the economy has never been, and was never meant to be, the role of the court.
I can’t disagree more with Miami-Dade Judge Jennifer Bailey, who said in the Herald “We’ve been charged by the Supreme Court with this funding to move these cases.’’

Your job, with all due respect, has always been to make sure that the legal process is upheld. Pure and simple.

It is wrong for the court to allow a lender or a servicer to present a case if they don’t have standing, if they aren’t the true owner of the note. It was true during the first round of rocket dockets, and absolutely nothing has changed.
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What I Tell Clients Who Receive a Foreclosure Notice

Monday, August 13th, 2012

A version of this blog was originally published on Yahoo! Homes and is being republished on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.

US ForeclosuresAs a real estate attorney, I’ve had plenty of prospective clients come to my office after being served with a foreclosure notice. It is safe to say they are usually not in a good mood; they are usually scared.

And the truth is I would be too. Foreclosure can be a scary process for even the most legally astute homeowner.

When a homeowner walks into my office for that first time, there is one question that comes up almost every time. It’s a basic yet very essential question to anyone under the threat of foreclosure…

What do I do next?

It may seem obvious, but there is one thing I would advise a homeowner to never, ever do — and that is nothing.

Sadly, that is the option I have seen too many homeowners take. Sometimes they see an unfamiliar lender’s name on the notice, and assume it’s a mistake. Or they believe that foreclosure is inevitable, and there is nothing they they can do to fight it.

The clock is ticking

Either way the reality is this: how long a homeowner waits to address a foreclosure notice has a direct correlation to the options that will be available to them.

In most states, you have 20 to 30 days to reply to a complaint; here in Florida it is 20 days.

In my experience, homeowners who don’t respond will probably end up with a clerk’s judgment and in default.
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Obamacare, the Foreclosure Crisis and the Rule of Law

Friday, June 29th, 2012

This commentary was originally published on Yahoo! Homes and is being redistributed on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.

United States Supreme CourtHuh? What do “Obamacare” and the foreclosure crisis have to do with each other?

Simply put, the legal debate over Obamacare largely centered on the individual mandate, a law that would require people to buy health insurance whether they wanted to or not.

A little to my surprise, the Supreme Court did uphold it, although as a tax.

During the passing of the healthcare law, it seemed that the president assumed that the government had the ability to force people to buy a product from a private company that they did not necessarily want.

The mandate’s survival in the Supreme Court on a much narrower standard apparently leaves the question far from settled.

I felt that there was little, if any, constitutional analysis done by the president and his team when they decided to pass the mandate, except for the fact that they perceived a compelling need for it.

And that’s how the debate over the healthcare law reminded me of the legal debate during the foreclosure crisis.

Back when I started defending homeowners, the judges took a simple view: You borrowed the money, therefore you owe the money, so you have to pay it back.

No one stopped to think whether the banks bringing these foreclosures had the constitutional right to do so.

No one.

No one asked whether the banks had fulfilled their legal requirements before filing suit, such as properly assigning notes and knowing who owned the mortgage.

Instead, there was a preference for expediency. Since the homeowner borrowed the money and owed the money, the homeowner had to pay. The banks would be able to sort out who actually owned anything among themselves, and the most important thing was to get the home away from the homeowner.
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