Applications For Foreclosures By Mighty Banks Are Often Speckled With Mistakes
by Karen, published: Wednesday May 19, 2010
There is an adage fixed to the walls in front of the chambers of Judge Arthur M. Schack in Supreme Court Building at Brooklyn – “Be sure brain in gear before engaging mouth.” Inside foreclosures are piled up high enough to vie with the Alps. Each week the high and mighty banks of USA seek out his court to snatch the houses of New York residents who have failed in paying mortgage dues. Very often, said Schack, the applications of the banks are speckled with mistakes.
Judge Schack points out one motion coming from Deutsche Bank. The representative of the bank had claimed to be the vice president of two banks. His office was located in Kansas City but the notarization of the signature was in Texas. Moreover the bank was not the owner of the mortgage when it started with foreclosure proceedings against the borrower. Promptly the matter was dismissed.
Judge Schack said, “I’m a little guy in Brooklyn who doesn’t belong to their country clubs, what I can tell you? I won’t accept their comedy of errors.”
While there are hot debates and angst against bailing out banks and demands for more action to help homeowners, Judge Schack is sparring with the deadliest sword of all – the law. The law is being used to put them lenders in their places. The sympathies of the judge are clear for all to see.
In the previous two years 102 foreclosure places had come before him. He has tossed out from these 46 cases. His slicing decisions laced with allusions to the wealth of the bank presidents that are reminders of the legendary King Croesus, have won the respect of the legal fraternity across USA and especially in Florida, Ohio and California.
One or two bank officials have tried to stand up against him complaining that the judge has been depriving them of what is rightfully theirs. Recently HSBC made an appeal against a ruling complaining that the judge has set before others a “dangerous precedent” by behaving like “both judge and jury.” He has got rid of foreclosure cases even before getting any response from the house owners.
Together with few other state and federal judges, Justice Schack has held up a magnifying glass before the doings of the mortgage industry. During the past decade the bankers in heady haste handed out millions of mortgage loans with terms that were an admixture of good, bad and dangerously ugly.
