August 19, 2010

During the course of nine separate court hearings in southwest Florida today, a Judge dismissed two foreclosure cases on motion of Jeff Barnes, Esq. for failure of the Plaintiff to link up assignments of the loan from the original lender to the Plaintiff in the Plaintiff’s pleadings, notwithstanding that post-filing assignments had been either filed or served in partial response to discovery. These rulings reflect a change from prior court rulings, where judges had permitted non-original lender Plaintiffs to generally plead that they owned and held the note and mortgage but had not explained how they came into ownership thereof in the allegations of the Complaint.

The effect of these rulings is to now force foreclosing Plaintiffs to give notice to borrowers up front, in the Complaint, as to how the Plaintiff (allegedly) acquired its interest in the mortgage and note, which will have the practical effect of streamlining defensive pleadings and narrowing discovery, and will not allow foreclosing non-original lender Plaintiffs to obscure material chain-of-title issues and blindside borrowers on summary judgment motions where alleged proof of chain of title is introduced for the first time.

The Judge also, in separate hearings, ordered foreclosing Plaintiffs to provide substantive responses to Mr. Barnes’ discovery requests after the Plaintiffs filed blanket objections in one case and open-ended Motions for more time to respond to the discovery (that being a Motion which does not request any specific amount of additional time to respond) in 2 other cases. Blanket objections to all discovery requests and open-ended Motions for more time which the moving Plaintiff does not even set for hearing are a common practice of foreclosure mills which are used to delay or hamstring discovery. The really arrogant mills then file a Motion for Summary Judgment while simultaneously refusing to provide responses to borrower discovery, necessitating additional hearings to reschedule the summary judgment hearing, motions to compel discovery, etc.

Jeff Barnes, Esq., www/ForeclosureDefenseNationwide.com