Today, we had our 2013 holiday office party. After working in the morning, the best supporting cast in the business and I took some time off to share a meal and unwind a bit. After eating at the Yard House in Gulfstream Park, we drove over to Holiday Bowling Lanes and bowled a couple games.
It is a yearly tradition that I share some thoughts via a poem. Just after our drinks arrived, I read the following to everyone:
Welcome to the 2013 holiday party!
One of the more bizarre trials I’ve had in recent memory.
Part 1 here…
Part 2 here…
Part 1 here…
In part one of this series, we started to tell the story of one of our latest Foreclosure wins.
It all started a little over a year ago when a husband and wife contacted our firm about a foreclosure. They were, and still are, facing the same struggles as millions of other Americans in the aftermath of Wall Street’s financial game that ended with the bailout for them and busted home values and foreclosures for millions of citizens. Their mortgage loan was taken out in 2008. Just like almost everyone else who took out a Wall Street housing bubble era mortgage, their loan was deeply underwater. After running out of options and getting the maddeningly familiar loan mod run around by their servicer they could no longer keep up with their payments. They came to us for help with the fear and dread of an impending foreclosure judgment looming in the near future. They were victims of sewer service, a practice in which parties to a lawsuit are never served but the case is moved forward based on an affidavit of a process server claiming the house was abandoned and the defendants cannot be found. Upon learning about the lawsuit they acted immediately to get the situation rectified by hiring the Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen.
Shortly after filing our motion to quash service, we got the defaults vacated. Then the case moved fast. After all, it’s a Miami-Dade case. Our preliminary motion to dismiss was denied. Then, we filed an answer and affirmative defenses. Shortly after that, what do you know, we received an Order from the Court Setting the Non-Jury Trial.
We have now reached the five-year anniversary of the financial crisis. It seems a lot longer than that. I remember just before the collapse, stepping into a condo that had recently sold for over $400,000. It was so close to the train tracks that it shook when trains went by. I knew what so many thought was reality, was not real. The crash so many of us expected to happen seemed to take almost everyone by surprise. Wall Street, left naked in the tub after the drain got pulled on their giant, approximately 7-year long treasure bath, scrambled for towels to cover up. Instead, our leaders handed them heated silk robes, champagne, and caviar.
Pillars of our financial system came crumbing down. Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bear Stearns, WAMU, and many more were shuttered. According to the FDIC Failed Bank List, only 3 banks collapsed in 2007. In 2008, that number rose to 24. Throughout 2009, the FDIC shut down @ 140 financial institutions and in 2010, @ 160! It has slowed down but banks are still failing. Approximately 22 have failed in 2013 already. We are still a long way away from seeing the end of this.
Very often I find myself working harder than ever. Extremely late nights in the office, getting out of bed at 5 A.M. thinking of some new wrinkle to an argument or a new fact I can elicit on cross examination at trial. My energy, passion, and motivation seem almost never ending. Thankfully, I have a young family. A beautiful four and a half year old little girl and a handsome one and half year old boy who both love their father so much, and an absolute angel of a wife, who does her best to care for us all. I see them far less than is healthy for any of us but I am doing the best I can. After all, I am an addict–addicted to fighting financial institutions.
At a recent foreclosure trial, during the voir dire of a bank witness, I asked three very calculating, simple, but also very specific questions to demonstrate that a witness could not know a key piece of information necessary for the Plaintiff to win its case. After my three questions, I moved for the judge to issue a finding of fact, which she did. The Plaintiff’s lawyer then literally stomped her feet and said “but judge I can’t win based on your ruling.” To which the judge replied, “I can’t tell you how to practice law.” The Plaintiff’s witness gave a throat slash signal and then their lawyer announced to the court they were taking a voluntary dismissal. As per Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.420, it’s a plaintiff’s right to voluntarily dismiss their case up until a certain point in the proceedings and I certainly wasn’t going to try to stop them. Out of all the wins at trial we have had, this was by far my most memorable one.
Unfortunately, for now, I can’t publicly disclose what those three questions were because I would very much like to continue to return to this “well.” Thanks to the magic of technology, I know my posts are visited by at least one computer at every major foreclosure plaintiff’s law firm and if given some time to think about this, most good bank lawyers know there is an easy way for them to get around this three question trap.
However, I do share the specifics of this, as well as all my successful trial strategies at the Foreclosure Defense Trial Workshop. Seats are filling up fast and, for a few reasons, this could be the last one.
The Law Offices of Evan M. Rosen obtains another win for a client in a foreclosure case. This dismissal comes on the eve of trial resulting from a deposition taken of Angela Edwards, a Complaint Verifier for Homeward Residential and a Motion to Strike Verification as a Sham that followed.
It all started months before the trial was set and it was one of our first cases we decided to go after the verifier of the complaint. So we served the witness with a subpoena and set down the deposition. Little did we know that a few weeks later we would have the weapon needed to defeat this foreclosure.
It was plainly obvious from our deposition that Ms. Edwards had very little knowledge of even the basics of her employer’s business. Although she claimed she received training to verify complaints, she could not explain basic facts that were alleged in the Complaint and did not even know what to look for in order to verify those facts. Most poignantly, she admittedly did not verify certain key aspects of the Complaint but instead relied on the Complaint itself as her proof that the allegations stated therein were true and correct.If this were a philosophy paper, a somewhat circular statement such as “I think therefore I am” is perfectly acceptable. However, in a court of law, when a document requires that it be verified as true and correct, under penalty of perjury, one cannot sign off that what is stated in the Complaint is true because it is stated in the Complaint. This is preposterous.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since we finished our first Foreclosure Trial Workshop. The feedback is in from the surveys. As we suspected from the enthusiasm, excitement and notable improvement in trial skills, the participants thought the event was a tremendous success. Here are just a few of the comments we received:
“This was the best trial advocacy CLE that I’ve ever attended, well worth my time away from my family”
“A Godsend! Evan is a natural teacher and the information provided is invaluable!”
On Friday, June 7, 2013, Governor Rick Scott signed Florida House Bill 87 into law which takes effect immediately. This law affects all outstanding mortgages and pending and future foreclosure lawsuits in Florida courts on Florida residential properties. Its main “purpose” is to provide an expedited foreclosure process.
Here is a brief summary of the new law’s provisions.
The Rosen Law Blog
