The Florida Foreclosure Fraud Weblog
Where Florida homeowners fight back against foreclosure fraud
The Law Office of David J. Stern is shutting its doors for good, according to a new filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That filing, on behalf of DJSP ENTERPRISES, INC. (the public legal-support company that Stern spun off from his law firm) says that: DJSP Enterprises, Inc.’s (the “Company’s”) primary customer, the [...]
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When I was a kid, I used to read science fiction novels with aliens who swooped down to Earth, attached themselves to poor innocent human beings, and control their minds to do the aliens’ bidding. When I read this order, the second of its kind from this judge, I have to wonder if that’s what’s [...]
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Here’s a great way to end a Friday: I just got an order in one of my cases throwing the case out of court, because the bank’s lawyers disobeyed a fairly simple rule that requires them to swear that the allegations in the complaint are true. The Final Order of Dismissal blasts the bank’s lawyers [...]
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Rules are meant to be followed in Pasco County Unlike in Lee County, the judges in Pasco County expect banks to follow the rules in foreclosure cases. The verification rule and its critics Earlier this year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs in foreclosure cases had to verify the foreclosure complaint—in other words, they [...]
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This ruling is a disgrace: Lee County Judge Hugh Starnes has ruled that banks in foreclosure cases don’t have to follow court rules. At a recent foreclosure hearing, the defense attorney (Conrad Willkomm) argued that the bank had violated an important evidentiary rule: the bank was relying on its business records, but no one swore [...]
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A Sudden Bullfight Imagine, for a moment, that you have a bullfight tomorrow. In the hot afternoon sun, you’ll step into a bullring, cape in one hand, blade in the other, and stare down an angry, two-ton beast with long, sharp horns. How long have you known about this bullfight? Sometime this morning. And, oh, [...]
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Dear Florida judges: You’re under a lot of pressure. We understand. Foreclosure cases are at an all-time high, and still rising – and you have to figure out a way to handle them all. The foreclosure docket threatens to crowd out almost every other civil matter pending before the court – and now that foreclosure [...]
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Lawyers for Homeowner Rights, a group of Florida foreclosure lawyers dedicated to protecting the legal rights of Florida homeowners, are set to march on Tallahassee to protest a dangerous new foreclosure law proposed by the banks. What if you were accused of a crime, convicted, and sentenced without a trial? Imagine you were accused of [...]
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New foreclosure lawsuit rules require plaintiffs’ mills to tell the truth -and boy, are they mad! On February 11, the Florida Supreme Court amended the rules of foreclosure proceedings in a radical way: they want someone to swear that the allegations in the complaint are actually true. (Buncha bomb-throwers, aren’t they?) The amended rule says: [...]
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When you sell a piece of property you generally presume that you are no longer responsible for what might happen to the property after it’s transferred to the new owners, but that’s not what happened to a recent caller to the firm looking for help. This individual called to ask how she could be responsible [...]
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How to beat foreclosure Today’s St. Petersburg Times features a front-page story with the bold-face heading “How to Beat Foreclosure” and tells the stories of people who have stayed in their homes for years by gaming the system. Only one problem: filing bankruptcy time and time again is an abuse of the system, and can [...]
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Car rental companies hate me. Whenever I rent a car, before I sign that two-sided, extra-long, faint-colored fine-print contract of theirs, I sit and read it, so I know what I’ve agreed to. Now, I’ve been a lawyer for fifteen years. I can say I understand those contracts almost all the time. But the average [...]
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Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure: Giving up the keys Just want to hand in the keys and walk away from your upside-down loan? Many of our clients – often facing impossible monthly payments or gut-wrenching shortfalls on their loan-to-value ratios – just want to turn in the keys and walk away from their loans. “What [...]
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