Florida Judges, Finding Bank Fraud, Increasingly Side With Foreclosed Homeowners

The Palm Beach Post :

Angry and exasperated by faulty foreclosure documents, judges throughout Florida are hitting back by increasingly dismissing cases and boldly accusing lawyers of "fraud upon the court."

A Palm Beach Post review of cases in state and appellate courts found judges are routinely dismissing cases for questionable paperwork. Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents, in a growing number of cases judges are awarding homeowners their homes free and clear after finding fraud upon the court.

Read the whole story: The Palm Beach Post

Comments

[Rick Cain]

04:49 PM on 04/06/2011

I think its a good idea to give people the houses outright. The bank was going to lose the money anyway, the rich person who sold the mortgage already got away with the profits, and houses that are occupied keep neighborhood values from declining, so in the long term the banks do better with unsold inventory.

[Perry Forman]

02:30 PM on 04/04/2011

Matt Taibbi wrote about this quite a while ago. It should have become front page news the day his article came out. Basically, if you as a homeowner didn't dot all your i's and cross all your t's the judge was rubber stamping your foreclosure paperwork, post-haste. He had the story of 1 banks paperwork that contradicted itself 3 times in the same document. But the judge just told the bank to come back later after correcting the errors.

Unfortunately, this article is not making it sound as if it's any different today. As it states:

Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents,

[Rick Cain]

04:53 PM on 04/06/2011

The fun part is if the bank has any appropriate documents at all. When mortgages get securitized, its darn near impossible to follow the paper trail to prove ownership of the mortgage.

[tompoe]

02:21 PM on 04/04/2011

We have 65.4 million foreclosures to go. At what absurd point, does it become obvious enough to actually call a moratorium, and sort out the prosecutions that need to go forward? By the way, Boehner, where are the jobs?

[dropthedh]

02:12 PM on 04/04/2011

Matt Taibbi had this one nailed in his article for the Rolling Stone.

[Tom95134]

01:31 PM on 04/04/2011

It seems to me that if the judges really wanted to fix things that they would be handing down directed verdicts awarding a guaranteed free and clear title to the property to the homeowner when the bank tries to commit fraud on the court.

[Larry Motuz]

01:54 PM on 04/04/2011

Very good. Fanned.

[FredDerf]

11:33 AM on 04/04/2011

What we need now are some hanging judges. "Fraud upon the court," take the lawyer out hang hang him/her ASAP. Bet this all would be cleaned up quickly.

[Larry Motuz]

01:56 PM on 04/04/2011

Fraud upon the court should be treated as 'contempt of court' with indeterminate fines and sentences. That would stop things quickly.

[ChiKevin]

02:08 PM on 04/04/2011

Are we back in the 1800s?

[tompoe]

02:22 PM on 04/04/2011

That's what the corporations and banks think.

[Peter Combs]

11:30 AM on 04/04/2011

Bravo...if you haven't paid your mortgage and the Banks are so fould up they cannot provide accurate paperwork to make their case..screw them.

[Rick Cain]

04:51 PM on 04/06/2011

If a citizen comes to court without accurate paperwork, the case gets tossed out immediately. Why should corporations get special treatment under the law?

[lizinsarasota]

10:21 PM on 05/05/2011

Oh, honey, if you or me came to court with a fraudulent affidavit the judge would put us UNDER the jail.
Frigging banks. Frigging lawyers. I say disbarment for every lawyer whose firm used Lender Processing Services, and that covers a whole lot of ground. If they didn't know outright they were committing fraud on the court by filing phony documents, then they're too STUPID to be lawyers. Lord have mercy, a six year old knows that it's wrong to say you did something or know something when you don't.
I'm for disbarring and fining the lawyers, putting the bankers in jail and fining them big time, and jail time for notaries, too.
And the judges, hey, they're just covering their backsides. Do you really think they didn't know what was going on? Get real.

[Ann Marie Orlando]

10:41 AM on 04/04/2011

The judges here are awesome...taking care of the little guy !

[Rick Cain]

04:52 PM on 04/06/2011

Until Fox News does a profile on the "corrupt judge" and corporations work on getting him out of office in the next election. Its just how big money works in the USA, and we are all co-conspirators when we succumb to our greed.

[lizinsarasota]

10:22 PM on 05/05/2011

Hey, I'm glad to hear you're getting a reasonable reception up in Orlando. C'mon down to the 12th Judicial Circuit & you'll get your clock cleaned.