Tom Lyons, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
When a ruling is reversed by an appellate court, the judge faulted sometimes grumbles.
So I didn’t know what to expect when I asked Circuit Court Judge Robert Bennett about an appellate court ruling that overturned a house foreclosure he had granted.
The three-judge panel said a bank that was not the original lender had not proven it had the right to foreclose, because the documents filed did not show how, or if, mortgage ownership had ever been transferred to the bank.
Bennett’s reaction?
The higher court was totally right, he said.
“I’m willing to fall on my sword on this one,” Bennett said. “It wasn’t a very good piece of judge work.”
To be fair, many judges have done much the same thing in similar cases, partly because most foreclosures had long been so routine. If contested at all, it was rare that anyone claimed a major financial institution had not proven any link to the mortgage.
Now, just a couple of years since Bennett’s ruling on a foreclosure case he cannot even recall, that sort of claim has become commonplace. Of the dozen or so lawyers I’ve heard from who fight foreclosures — a common specialty these days — all mentioned that issue.
“This issue of standing, it’s common throughout the state,” said circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth.
Many mortgages from the past decade were sold, packaged together, and resold as securities. Showing ownership of just one became complicated, especially because transfer paperwork was often not done for each mortgage.
Law firms that some call “foreclosure mills” handle loan default cases by the thousands for financial institutions that were not the original lenders. Some have filed odd documents in their court cases.
Read more here: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100307/COLUMNIST/3071071?p=all&tc=pgall
