Juez del condado Palm Beach reclama a bancos mas evidencia en demandas de ejecuciones hipotecarias

Palm Beach County judges want more evidence in uncontested foreclosures

10/19/2010 © Palm Beach Post

Thousands of Palm Beach County homes have been repossessed by lenders that failed to follow a court rule requiring evidence be attached to foreclosure affidavits, something judges often allowed to happen when no one contested the case.
After revelations in recent weeks that sworn affidavits from several major banks and home loan servicers may be flawed, Palm Beach County Chief Judge Peter Blanc said banks will increasingly have to prove their foreclosure claims with sworn or certified supporting paperwork.
The 15th Circuit's judges discussed the evidence regulation, outlined in the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure for summary judgments, on Friday. A summary judgment is a swift ruling held in lieu of a full trial. They are requested by bank attorneys when the facts of the foreclosure are considered irrefutable.
"In the past when affidavits came in on defaults, the judges haven't been requiring the documents because no one was there objecting," said Blanc, who added that about 80 percent of foreclosures in the county are not contested. "Dealing with the volume we are dealing with we want to make sure that all or i's are dotted and t's crossed."

More than 30,000 Palm Beach County homes were served a foreclosure notice in 2009. The tally through September this year is 16,068, according to the Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts.
Since lenders, including mortgage giants Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Ally Financial Inc., announced a halt to some of their foreclosure proceedings pending review of court documents and procedures, Blanc has been debating how active judges be in foreclosure cases, especially those that aren't challenged. Bank of America announced Monday it plans to restart its foreclosure process and resubmit documents with new signatures in states, including Florida, that require a judge's approval for a foreclosure.
Blanc said if the foreclosure affidavits are accurate, and they are based on personal knowledge, it shouldn't be too time consuming for the evidence to be printed and attached.
The problem is the faulty affidavits have been shown in depositions not to be based on personal knowledge, sworn to instead by bank employees signing up to 10,000 documents every month. Also, sworn statements from former employees of the large foreclosure law firm David J. Stern in Plantation have stated that affidavits were backdated, included forged signatures and were notarized by non-notaries. Stern's attorney Jeff Tew refutes any statements that illegal activity happened at the firm.
Foreclosure defense attorneys have argued for months that in the rush to take back homes, that large law firms representing lenders and overwhelmed judges ignored the evidence rule. Only when attorneys or homeowners protested did the rush to summary judgment slow, they claim.
"Just because a case is uncontested doesn't mean a judge should just sign off on whatever is being requested without proof of what kind of damages the bank is entitled to," said Tampa-based foreclosure defense attorney Mark Stopa. "The volume of cases before a judge does not change the plaintiff's burden of proof."
West Palm Beach defense attorney Joseph Rodowicz is handling more than 50 foreclosure cases submitted by Stern's firm and that of the Florida Default Law Group in Tampa. He said none of his cases has supporting documentation attached to affidavits.
"When a court is looking for a judgment they should have evidence before it of a debt," Rodowicz said.
Rodowicz and Stopa said they would expect to see, at the very least, an account history attached to the affidavits that would show payments or a trail of ownership if the loan had been sold or bundled into a security.
Tew said his client's firm will comply with whatever the courts request and that he doesn't believe it will be overly burdensome.
"I don't think it will slow the process," Tew said. Stern has been hit hard by the foreclosure freeze. Tew acknowledged that the onetime ninth-largest private employer in Broward County with about 1,600 employees has recently had to institute layoffs.