With judges looking ever more critically at home foreclosures, they are reaching beyond the bankers to heap some of their most scorching criticism on the lawyers.
Foreclosure
In numerous opinions, judges have accused lawyers of processing shoddy or even fabricated paperwork in foreclosure actions when representing the banks.
Judge Arthur M. Schack of New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn has taken aim at an upstate lawyer, Steven J. Baum, referring to one filing as “incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous.”
But New York judges are also trying to take the lead in fixing the mortgage mess by leaning on the lawyers. In November, a judge ordered Mr. Baum’s firm to pay nearly $20,000 in fines and costs related to papers that he said contained numerous “falsities.” The judge, Scott Fairgrieve of Nassau County District Court, wrote that “swearing to false statements reflects poorly on the profession as a whole.”
More broadly, the courts in New York State, along with Florida, have begun requiring that lawyers in foreclosure cases vouch for the accuracy of the documents they present, which prompted a protest from the New York bar. The requirement, which is being considered by courts in other states, could open lawyers to disciplinary actions that could harm or even end careers.
Stephen Gillers, an expert in legal ethics at New York University, agreed with Judge Fairgrieve that the involvement of lawyers in questionable transactions could damage the overall reputation of the legal profession, “which does not fare well in public opinion” throughout history.
“When the consequence of a lawyer plying his trade is the loss of someone’s home, and it turns out there are documents being given to the courts that have no basis in reality, the profession gets a very big black eye,” Professor Gillers said.
The issue of vouching for documents will undoubtedly meet resistance by lawyers elsewhere as it has in New York.
Anne Reynolds Copps, the chairwoman of the real property law section of the New York State bar, said, “We had a lot of concerns, because it seemed to paint attorneys as being the problem.” Lawyers feared they would be responsible for a bank’s mistakes. “They are relying on a client, or the client’s employees, to provide the information on which they are basing the documents,” she said.
The role of lawyers is under scrutiny in the 23 states where foreclosures must be reviewed by a court. The situation has become especially heated for high-volume firms whose practices mirror the so-called robo-signing of some financial institutions; in these cases, documents were signed without sufficient examination or proper notarization.
In the most publicized example, David J. Stern, a lawyer whose Florida firm has been part of an estimated 20 percent of the foreclosure actions in the state, has been accused of filing sloppy and even fraudulent mortgage paperwork. Major institutions have dropped the firm, which has been the subject of several lawsuits, and 1,200 of the 1,400 people once at the firm are out of work.
The Florida attorney general’s office is conducting a civil investigation of Mr. Stern’s firm and two others.
“There’s been no determination” in a court that Mr. Stern or his employees “did wrong things, said Jeffrey Tew, Mr. Stern’s lawyer, adding that the impact was nevertheless devastating.
“There are groups in society that everybody likes to hate,” Mr. Tew added. “Now foreclosure lawyers are on the list.”
Such concerns have, in recent months, brought a sharp focus on activities in New York State, and in particular on the practice of Mr. Baum, a lawyer in Amherst, outside Buffalo. Judges have cited his firm for what they call slipshod work that, in some cases, was followed by the dismissal of foreclosure actions.
One case involved Sunny D. Eng, a former manager of computer systems on Wall Street. He and his wife, who has cancer, stopped paying the mortgage on their Holtsville, N.Y., home after Mr. Eng’s Internet services business foundered. The mortgage was originally held by the HTFC Corporation, but the foreclosure notice came from Wells Fargo , a bank that the Engs had no relationship with. They hired an experienced foreclosure defense lawyer on Long Island, Craig Robins. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Mr. Eng.
“You want to call it God, you can call it God,” Mr. Eng said. “You want to call it luck, you can call it luck. We just followed the system, and thank God the system worked.”
Through a spokesman, Mr. Baum said, “The foreclosure process in New York State is extremely complex and subject to extensive judicial review. We believe this review respects the due process of anyone who challenges a foreclosure. Consumer activists and attorneys representing homeowners have their own agenda in this process, including degrading the legal work we conduct on behalf of our clients by using terms like ’foreclosure mill,’ which I find personally and professionally insulting.”
He added, “What is important now is that all parties attempt to work together to resolve issues amicably. The barrage of accusations and litigation does little to help the underlying problems.”
Cases across the nation like Mr. Eng’s have led New York’s judicial system to take a hard look at the 80,000 pending foreclosures in the state and demand that the paperwork be sound, said the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman. “Knowing what we know, our only option — at least from my perspective — is to turn to the lawyers who are officers of the court and say, ’You’d better go to your clients and find out if these cases are real,’ ” he said.
The court devised a two-page affirmation to be signed by lawyers in foreclosure actions saying they had reviewed the documents and had “confirmed the factual accuracy” of any allegations with the clients.
Ann Pfau, deputy chief administrative judge for New York State, who has worked directly with the state bar to carry out the plan, said, “We need to know that this is a court process that has some integrity.”
Judge Pfau said, “If you can’t get good information, you shouldn’t be filing the cases in the first place.”
To address some lawyer concerns, the judiciary issued a modified version of the affirmation in November but said that the alterations were minor. In the end, the lawyers are vouching for their filing, Judge Pfau said. “They are absolutely still on the hook.”
While lawyers are being implicated as part of the problem, they should also be part of the solution, said Stephen P. Younger, the president of the New York State Bar Association, which has not taken an overall position on the foreclosure matter. Foreclosure defense lawyers, he noted, have led court proceedings to throw out flawed cases.
“The real problem is that there are thousands and thousands of people who are unrepresented by lawyers,” Mr. Younger said.