Livinglies's Weblog

I have spent the last six months drafting, re-drafting, editing, researching and investigating the basis for filing a brief as a friend of the court.

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The basis for an amicus curiae brief is the anticipated willingness of the receiving court to admit that there are factors involved about which the judge or panel lacks adequate knowledge or understanding. The problem with foreclosures is that judges think they understand all they need to know. Hence an amicus curiae brief is unlikely to be accepted or even read. Some judges might accept it into the court file, but they still won’t read it or give it any weight.

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This is very much like the whole issue of fake news. In this case, the securitization players have spent billions of dollars convincing the American public, agency regulators, homeowners, lawyers, judges and appellate judges or justices that the transaction with the homeowner was a loan. Like all fake news, the more people read it and the more often they read it, the more they believe it. Judges believe in the value of precedent — decisions made previously by other courts.

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CONFIRMATION BIAS: Each judge that has allowed the claim of securitization players to go forward as a foreclosure has reinforced the false narrative that the money received by homeowners was a loan and not payment for services rendered (i.e., payment to allow personal information to be used for marketing and selling securities, and payment for execution of documents bearing the label of loan documents so that securities could be sold).

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So each time another court twists some law like the statute of limitations beyond recognition in order to save the foreclosure from being dismissed or vacated, they are contributing to the growing false narrative that somehow foreclosures are reducing the loss in an account receivable on the ledger of some company that has paid value in exchange for receiving a conveyance of ownership of the underlying debt from someone who owned it.

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But nobody has ever seen such an account. They have only seen the reports from a self-proclaimed servicer who refuses to assert for whom it is working and refuses to provide any confirmation that any money collected from any homeowner is sent to any creditor.

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I have come to the conclusion that after months of drafting potential amicus briefs, it is a nonstarter and all that work was for naught. But that freed me to think about other strategies that might directly impact the current pandemic of confirmation bias. I think an administrative rule challenge might be that vehicle. 

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A petition to the Supreme Court of each state asserting that the current loose pleading and certification requirements reflect a bygone era in which a known creditor with an uncontested account receivable sought a remedy to offset a loss from nonpayment. In the hundreds of thousands of contested cases at least one of the principal issues raised in defense has been the true status and ownership of the alleged obligation.

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A requirement that the pleading or notice explicitly must assert the identity of the party currently carrying the account receivable (in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting principles -GAAP)— certified by the sworn statement an actual officer of that creditor would (a) narrow the issues in discovery and (b) quite possibly narrow either the number of claims, defenses or both.  The availability of that officer for deposition or other discovery should be a condition precedent to allowing any evidence seeking to prove the assertion that a loan account exists or is owned by anyone.

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The basic pre-approved pleading forms and rules allowing foreclosures should be changed to reflect the new reality — or the court must consider whether it is going to allow, without legislation, changes in the law to allow virtual creditors to make and collect on claims.