Livinglies's Weblog

Tonight’s Show Hosted by Neil Garfield, Esq.

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And the reason is simple: lawyers who are consistently successful at defending foreclosures are targeted with disciplinary actions, punishments and civil actions that either directly or indirectly bar them from ever representing or soliciting a client for foreclosure defense litigation. It’s not difficult to identify the beneficiary of this phenomenon: it’s the Wall Street investment banks that are falsely claiming to have securitized transactions with homeowners that are falsely represented and labeled as loans. They get the money proceeds from forced sales of homesteads and they don’t distribute it to anyone who paid value for entry into the securitization scheme.

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I have been a litigator for 45 years. During that time I have also written workbooks on and given CLE seminars to lawyers across the country on various topics relating to business litigation foreclosure, evidence, discovery and expert testimony.

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I have never seen a situation like this, created entirely by overreaching of state bar grievance procedures and civil actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission and State AG offices under cover of preventing fraudulent “foreclosure rescue” scams. They have even come after me, repeatedly but because of my experience in defending administrative actions, they were largely unsuccessful.

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The establishment is firmly committed to policies that chase away any lawyers or homeowners who seek to win foreclosure cases. The same establishment is equally firmly committed to supporting the foreclosure attorneys who are representing nonexistent clients with whom they have no contact, on nonexistent claims.

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I personally know of dozens of lawyers who were making a name for themselves winning one case after another for homeowners, only to be swept off the field by one of these targeted administrative or civil actions. And yet I have seen not one such action directed at one lawyer or one law firm where the final judgment specifically and expressly stated there was no claim. I personally was lead counsel in two of those cases.

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The losers are millions of homeowners denied adequate disclosure as to their rights, denied due process, denied access of courts, denied equal protection, and the same for the foreclosure defense attorneys who simply used their skills in court to defeat the claim because there was no claim.