If the courts can’t address clear instances of fraud and injustice, how can they protect our citizens?
New Deal 2.0-
It has been exactly 18 months since I deposed GMAC Mortgage’s prolific document signer, Jeffrey Stephan, in a case where I was defending a Maine homeowner in foreclosure. Stephan admitted to signing 8,000 to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month (that is about one a minute, if you do the arithmetic), including summary judgment affidavits used by courts as the basis for entering forclosure judgments. Stephan’s affidavits were sent by GMAC to courts all over the country. Obviously, and as Stephan admitted, he did not bother to read those affidavits. He also admitted that he had no idea as to whether the foreclosure affidavits that he signed were true. He didn’t even trouble himself to appear before a notary to be sworn, even though his affidavits said that he had done so. While Stephan admitted that he understood that judges were relying upon his affidavits to take away the homes of homeowners all over the country, he seemed serene and untroubled by his dishonesty in signing these false affidavits. (Conduct like this has since been awarded the slang term “robo-signing,” but I never use it because it fails to adequately describe the dishonesty and deception involved.)
A Denmark woman whose case touched off a national uproar over foreclosures with faulty paperwork may finally lose her home.
KJOnline-
By a 5-1 decision released this morning, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court ruling that allowed loan servicer GMAC Mortgage, despite admittedly flawed practices involved in affadavit signing, to foreclose upon a home in Denmark purchased in 2003 by Nicolle M. Bradbury.
PORTLAND – The “robo-signing” foreclosure case of a Denmark woman represents such a serious attack on the integrity of the state’s judicial system that an investigation of the mortgage servicer’s practices is warranted, the woman’s lawyer argued before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday.
Nicolle Bradbury’s attorney, Thomas Cox, also said a lower court erred when it failed to find GMAC Mortgage in contempt because one of its employees signed a sworn document in support of foreclosure on her home without reviewing the relevant records. Cox, who discovered the flawed process, argued that it was part of a pattern and that the trial court should have considered remedial or punitive action against GMAC.
Cox said such affidavits affect all of the 1,152 foreclosure actions brought in Maine by GMAC over the past six years. He said GMAC was sanctioned in Florida for the same problems in 2006, but failed to reform its practices.
DENMARK, Me. — The house that set off the national furor over faulty foreclosures is blue-gray and weathered. The porch is piled with furniture and knickknacks awaiting the next yard sale. In the driveway is a busted pickup truck. No one who lives there is going anywhere anytime soon.
Nicolle Bradbury bought this house seven years ago for $75,000, a major step up from the trailer she had been living in with her family. But she lost her job and the $474 monthly mortgage payment became difficult, then impossible.
It should have been a routine foreclosure, with Mrs. Bradbury joining the anonymous millions quietly dispossessed since the recession began. But she was savvy enough to contact a nonprofit group, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, where for once in her 38 years, she caught a break.
Her file was pulled, more or less at random, by Thomas A. Cox, a retired lawyer who volunteers at Pine Tree. He happened to know something about foreclosures because when he worked for a bank he did them all the time. Twenty years later, he had switched sides and, he says, was trying to make amends.
Suddenly, there is a frenzy over foreclosures. Every attorney general in the country is participating in an investigation into the flawed paperwork and questionable methods behind many of them. A Senate hearing is scheduled, and federal inquiries have begun. The housing market, which runs on foreclosure sales, is in turmoil. Bank stocks fell on Thursday as analysts tried to gauge the impact on lenders’ bottom lines.
All of this is largely because Mr. Cox realized almost immediately that Mrs. Bradbury’s foreclosure file did not look right. The documents from the lender, GMAC Mortgage, were approved by an employee whose title was “limited signing officer,” an indication to the lawyer that his knowledge of the case was effectively nonexistent.
Mr. Cox eventually won the right to depose the employee, who casually acknowledged that he had prepared 400 foreclosures a day for GMAC and that contrary to his sworn statements, they had not been reviewed by him or anyone else.
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