By looks of this, it appears to have to do with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.
From the order:
4. All mortgage foreclosure cases are hereby STAYED and shall remain so until further order of the Court. Any deadlines for filing on any issue are hereby suspended. Counsel are permitted to file Notice of Appearance.
[…]
9. The Court will hear argument on the standing issue in Plaintiff’s Objections to the Reports and Recommendations in Fryzel v. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. et al. (C.A. No. 10-352-M) and Cosajay v. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. et al. (C.A. No. 10-442-M) on September 13, 2011 at 10:a.m. in Courtroom 3. Any party subject to this order that is not a party to the aforementioned two cases wishing to file an amicus brief on the standing shall do so by September 2, 2011. Only counsel in the aforementioned two individual cases will be allowed to present oral argument.
AMID all the talk of debt and default in Washington last week, tiny Central Falls, R.I., went bankrupt.
Like many states and cities in these hard economic times, Central Falls — population: 19,000 — was caught short by hefty pension obligations and weak tax revenue. It may not be the last municipality to file for bankruptcy. Jefferson County, Ala., is now on the brink of it, thanks to a sewer bond issue gone wildly bad.
But while pensions and the economy are behind many of municipalities’ troubles, Wall Street has played a role, too. Hidden expenses associated with how local governments finance themselves are compounding financial problems down at city hall.
Lets NOT forget Harmon Law Offices the foreclosure firm in the middle of this is being investigated by Attorney General Martha Coakley.
Providence Journal:
You can’t do it this way. You can’t just show up at a family’s door and tell them to get out with no notice. It’s thuggery.
But it almost happened. If not for some fast moving lawyers who know the territory and a compassionate cop, Angela Martinez and her three children and granddaughter would have been out on Lenox Avenue in Providence Tuesday morning.
“I get up early,” says Martinez. “I was getting my son ready for school, and I saw a big truck out front. There was a guy on the porch with a paper in his hand.”
To address that condition, and with no end to it in sight, we decided to break the log jam by introducing a process “for debtors and lenders to [mediate and to] reach consensual resolution when a debtor’s residential property is at risk of foreclosure” by “opening communications between debtors’ and [the] lenders’ decision-makers.”3 LMP §I Purpose, 1.
[…]
CONCLUSION
The Rhode Island Loss Mitigation Program was conceived as a case management tool designed to encourage the resolution of differences between residential mortgage lenders and their borrowers, and to provide a way for them to access the various federal housing programs available outside of bankruptcy, such as the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Loss Mitigation Program is intended to start a dialogue, giving the parties nothing more than the opportunity to discuss their respective positions. The alleged dire consequences of the implementation of such a Program, as predicted by PHH have not materialized, and if any do emerge, they will be judicially
addressed forthwith.
For the reasons discussed above, and based on the arguments of the NCLC and by the Debtors, here and in Lawton, which are adopted and incorporated herein by reference, PHH’s Objection to participating in this Court’s loss mitigation program is OVERRULED.
Dated at Providence, Rhode Island, this 28th day of January, 2011.
Arthur N. Votolato
U.S. Bankruptcy Court
Entered on docket: 1/28/11
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and federal regulators need to fix the mortgage foreclosure process so that it doesn’t derail the economic recovery, Senator Jack Reed and 16 other senators wrote in a letter yesterday.
“Mortgage market issues point to an emerging threat to financial stability that should be forcefully addressed now,” wrote Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island. The letter, obtained by Bloomberg News, was also signed by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont, and 15 other Democrats including Senators John Kerry and Dick Durbin.
The letter shows increasing concern from lawmakers that the Obama administration hasn’t done enough to stem the housing crisis. Home prices may decline 5 percent this year as the housing market starts to stabilize, Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, said in a Dec. 31 Bloomberg Television interview.
One judge to hear all MERS-related cases in the state
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 31, 2010
By Christine Dunn
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE –– One Providence Superior Court judge, Allen P. Rubine, has been assigned to hear all cases in Rhode Island that are related to the Mortgage Electronic Registration System.
Alice B. Gibney, presiding justice of the Superior Court, issued an administrative order in September directing the courts in Kent, Washington and Newport counties to transfer all their MERS-related cases to Justice Rubine.
Formed by the mortgage finance industry, MERS was created to increase profits and efficiency by eliminating the need to record changes in mortgage ownership at local government property registries when loans are sold multiple times and/or bundled and sold together in pools. MERS is a corporation that also acts as a nominee for lenders and their successors.
An Aug. 25, 2009, decision by Providence Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein upheld the right of MERS to foreclose in Rhode Island.
The case, brought by Anthony and Stephanie Bucci, of Cranston, through their lawyer, George E. Babcock, of Providence, has been appealed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The defendants in the case are Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB, a federal savings bank, MERS, and Aurora Loan Services, LLC.
Judge Silverstein ruled that Rhode Island law “does not prohibit MERS from invoking the Statutory Power of Sale [foreclosure]” because “statutes should not be construed to reach an absurd result.”
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