Success Stories

One of the most important strategies in Florida foreclosure cases is to conduct discovery. This means sending written questions, or interrogatories, for the bank to answer under oath and requesting documents that the bank has regarding the loan. In this case, the bank filed an affidavit, which is a sworn statement, that says that the person signing the affidavit, the affiant, had personal knowledge regarding the loan and that Bank United owns the loan, and that the loan is in default. In this depo, we were able to establish that the affiant for Bank United actually had no personal knowledge of anything. All she did was look at a computer screen and she regurgitated what was found there. She did not enter the information into the system, did not know who entered it into the system, and has no personal knowledge if the information was accurate. Yet, she still signed an affidavit that she had personal knowledge regarding these matters. The bottom line is that you never take what the bank tells you at face value. Here is a little snippet of the depo:

Q. And in terms of all of the numbers that are accurate, your attorney asked if you had any reason to doubt they’re accurate. Do you have any reason to believe they’re accurate? Because you testified previously that you didn’t put it in, you don’t know about the systems. I mean…

A. I rely on the system.

Q. Right. But do you have any reason to believe they are accurate?

A. I rely on the system to be accurate. That’s what I go by and review.

Q. But you have no persona! knowledge regarding the accuracy?

A. No.

Our foreclosure lawyers take depositions for our clients in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and all other Florida counties.

First off, I want to apologize for not blogging for the last couple of months. It been crazy fighting for homeowner rights in this pro-bank client.

On to the good stuff. I went to trial last week against Select Portfolio Servicing, Inc. with the best result possible for our client in foreclosure. The foreclosure trial was in Palm Beach in front of the Honorable Edward Fine. I have never tried a case with Judge Fine before. I found him to be thorough and deliberate and fair to both sides. One of the elements of the trial is whether the bank properly accelerated the mortgage. Paragraph 22 of this mortgage requires the bank to send notice to the borrower that they are in default before they can file a foreclosure action. The notice must meet certain requirements.

Now, its one thing to have the notice, but its another to introduce it into evidence. A notice of acceleration is hearsay, however, the business records exception to the hearsay rules allows the introduction of business records if the bank lays the appropriate foundation. In this trial, the bank’s witness could not testify who sent the notice. He said that it could have been Select Portfolio Servicing, or it could have been one of two vendors they use. The court did not allow the notice into evidence because the witness could not state that it was the bank’s record. It could have the vendor’s business record. Being that the witness could not state either way what happened, the court would not allow the notice of acceleration into evidence.

This was huge because without the notice of acceleration in evidence, the bank could not overcome our affirmative defense that the bank failed to meet this condition precedent. Thus, the bank was denied the foreclosure and they can not take our foreclosure client’s home. An excellent foreclosure attorney will be well versed in the rules of evidence. This is where foreclosure trials are won and lost. Our lawyers represent foreclosure clients throughout the state of Florida. The foreclosure lawyers at Loan Lawyers are all well versed in the rules of evidence and are ready to fight the bank for you.

This result would not have happened if we did not know what we are doing. I have personally been doing trials for 14 years now. I know the rules of evidence cold. If this case was being handled by a foreclosure lawyer that does not know how to try a case, its a safe bet that this would have been a very different result. I think its also worth noting that of all the trial set in the courtroom that day, I was the only foreclosure lawyer who actually fought for their client. My client was also the only one who did not lose their house that day.

When you are looking for a lawyer to handle your foreclosure case, ask to see results like this. Ask about the lawyer’s trial experience, how long she/he have been practicing, and how many cases they have actually taken to trial. Most lawyers simply agree to the foreclosure when push come to shove and the trial has been set. I love trials, it is what I was born to do. I would also love to be the lawyer handling your foreclosure. Call us today for a free consultation at (844) 344-4813.

Free consultations for foreclosure defense are available in our Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach county offices.

Client came to our offices on March 24, 2016. The client’s circumstances were grim. The client was facing a sale date of April 27, 2016, she has a judgment entered against her following her default. We filed a very detailed motion and were able to get the sale canceled. Not only that but we were successful in getting the default and judgment removed and having the case against her completely dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. This was a great win!

Recently, a client came into our office for foreclosure defense representation. The client was being foreclosed on by her HOA. The client entered into a stipulation of settlement agreement with the HOA in 2013, but defaulted a year later. The HOA added a whole host of charges to the suit, including but not limited to: per diem interest, late fees, and attorney’s fees and costs. The HOA was attempting to collect almost 25k from our client.

What made this case especially problematic, was that our client was current on her mortgage with her lender but was facing a HOA judgment. The HOA filed for a Motion for Final Judgment against our client for defaulting on the stipulation of settlement. We entered the HOA case and aggressively defended the case. We filed a very aggressive answer with various affirmative defenses to the HOA’s complaint, discovery, and an opposition to the HOA’s Motion for Final Judgment. We also conducted a forensic accounting of what our client paid and what was still outstanding. It turned out that the HOA’s accounting was not completely accurate, but our client did end up owing past due assessments. Counsel for the HOA decided it would be better if they did not litigate. We ended up entering into a very favorable settlement with the HOA, shaving of various charges from the past due amount. The client’s goal from the onset of this case was to save her property, which is what we ended up doing for her. The HOA cancelled their hearing on their Motion for Final Judgment and our client was able to save her home getting back into good standing with the HOA. We are seeing more and more of these kind of cases. If you or someone you know is facing foreclosure from the HOA, please contact us immediately. It is always best to have a team of aggressive attorneys on your side!

Our foreclosure attorneys were in trial today against Nationstar Mortgage in Broward County, Florida. There were several issues in the trial. I will focus on one for this post. I have said again and again that banks have a difficult time proving that the loan was properly accelerated. That was the main issue in today’s foreclosure trial. Nationstar is the current loan servicer. They took over servicing several years ago when the loan was already allegedly in default. The previous loan servicer was Suntrust. Well, pursuant to paragraph 22 of the mortgage, the bank had to prove that it sent an acceleration notice to my clients. The letter was sent by Suntrust, but the witness at trial worked for Nationstar. I argued that the witness for Nationstar could not lay the foundation for the introduction of the acceleration letter that was supposedly sent by Suntrust. She did not know Suntrust’s policies and procedures for preparing or sending these letters and could not testify that Suntrust’s procedures were followed in this case. My position is supported by cases such as Glarum and Yang that discuss the introduction of records for prior companies. The court disagreed with my position, however, and found that testimony from the prior servicer was not necessary. The judge thus accepted the acceleration letter from Suntrust into evidence in the foreclosure trial. The same issue and arguments came up over the payment history and the court allowed that into evidence over my objection as well.

When it was time for cross examination, I began to cross examine the witness regarding the payment history and default letter. She testified again that the default letter was prepared and sent by Suntrust. She testified that she had reviewed everything in the foreclosure thoroughly and found no problems. However, as I kept questioning her, I finally got her to admit that she was not sure whether the amount stated in the acceleration letter was correct. As we kept going through the numbers and the payments together, I even got her to admit that Suntrust made some big mistakes and that my client cured the default at the letter required. This was huge in this foreclosure trial. The default letter said my client had to pay a certain amount. The witness finally admitted that my client paid more than that amount by making two payments that Suntrust held in a suspense account instead of applying the payments to my client’s account.

This was a great result for our clients who were facing the prospect of losing their home to foreclosure. In my 14 years of practicing law, I have never enjoyed doing anything more than helping homeowners. It is such a personally satisfying practice and I love to come to work everyday. So many South Florida residents lose their homes each day its great when we get to fight back and win. In the last 18 cases that we were going to go to trial on, 15 now have resulted in the cases either being dismissed or a judgment being entered in favor of our client. The facts of every case are different and past results do not guarantee any specific result. If you are looking to hire a foreclosure lawyer in Broward, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach, I highly recommend that you inquire about their foreclosure trial experience and ask to see some final judgments that they won their clients’ favor.

At Loan Lawyers, our foreclosure attorneys are ready to speak with you in Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach county. We have many tools we use to help homeowners save their home such as loan modification, foreclosure defense, bankruptcy, and (my favorite part) we sue banks. Call us today to schedule a free consultation in with our foreclosure attorneys.

This is one of the most egregious foreclosure abuses I have seen to date and thankfully the Loan Lawyers foreclosure defense team put a stop to it. Our client was am elderly woman who lived in her Palm Beach county house since 1986. In fact, she built the house, so she has a real special connection to it. She took out a loan with World Savings Bank in 2007. She was supposed to have a bi-weekly payment loan, but when she got to the closing, she realized that the note they wanted her to sign was a monthly payment loan. She did not want to sign the closing paperwork, but she was promised that she would have a bi-weekly payment anyway. They gave her information on the bi-weekly program to sign and they charged her $50.00 at closing to set it up. She also signed allowing the bank with automatically deduct her bi-weekly payment.

Well, the first mortgage statement comes, and guess what? It was a monthly bill, not a bi-weekly bill. For two years she fought with the bank to fix it. The bank did make a feeble attempt to do so, but our client was not satisfied. Eventually, she closed the bank account so that the bank could no longer withdraw money from her account. Instead, she decided she wanted the benefit of her bargain so she began making bi-weekly payments in July 2009. She made two payments in July, much more than what she was required to make. The next month, she did the same thing and again paid more than what was required. Well, the wonderful benevolent bank who always has their clients’ interests at heart (can you feel the sarcasm) applied these 4 payments over two months in such a way that it appeared our client was behind one month on her payment even though the bank received substantially more than it was owed for those two months. She started receiving threatening letters from the bank, so each month after that she went back to paying her regular monthly payment. In addition to paying IN FULL each month, she would send a monthly letter to the bank explaining the situation and asking them to correct. She was simply never behind on her mortgage, but the bank ignored her letters every month. What did Wells Fargo do instead, they returned her payment put her in foreclosure. Absolutely disgusting. This elderly woman never missed a mortgage payment and wrote the bank every month to fix the problem, but they chose to foreclose instead.

If you think that’s bad enough, it gets worse. We listed over one hundred exhibits on our exhibit list. The exhibits were the checks that Wells Fargo cashed, the statements they sent our client and all of the letters our client wrote the bank. I could understand that Wells Fargo is a huge corporation and sometimes mistakes may happen, but one would think that when they are foreclosing on an elderly woman who never missed a mortgage payment, someone would step up and fix this mess and keep this woman in her house. That is what any honorable person or corporation with some moral compass would do. We gave them all of the proof they needed to show they were wrong. What would Wells Fargo gain by throwing this elderly woman on a fixed income out on the street? How could the person who decided to move forward with this foreclosure sleep at night?

Ok, so the sage continues to get worse. Realizing that they have a problem on their hands, Wells Fargo makes no attempt to help this woman. Instead, they dig their heels in. They fly their #1 witness from Texas to South Florida to testify against this woman. This witness worked at World Savings, which became Wachovia, which became Wells Fargo. He has been at these 3 banks for almost 30 years. He knows every detail of every operation of each of these banks. To his credit, he is the best bank witness I have ever seen. He is truly a professional witness who knows everything. So again, instead of helping this poor woman, they decide to make sure they bring the best witness to give them the best chance to win. Okay, it still gets worse. The bank was originally represented by a foreclosure mill who shall remain nameless. They are not known to be the best, they are known to be a typical foreclosure mill. Wells Fargo fired them and hired a real top notch law firm who shall also remain nameless for now. To find this law firm, look for the tallest building in any downtown area and these are the lawyers on the penthouse floor. We jokingly call lawyers like this the “tall building lawyers”. These are the type of lawyers any rich corporation hires when they can’t lose and don’t care what it costs. My guess is that the two lawyers they hired were probably billing out $1,300 per hour or more between the two of them. Again, instead of helping this poor elderly woman, they decided to spend an absolute fortune on legal fees to make sure that this poor elderly woman won’t have a house anymore. It would have been much cheaper to simply fix this mistake and let this lady go back to paying her mortgage. Wells Fargo obviously cared about winning more than they cared about this lady.

So, we had trial this past Monday. I’ve done probably more foreclosure trials than 99% of the lawyers who do foreclosure defense, so I know what bank witnesses and lawyers do well and which did not do so well. My hat’s off to Wells Fargo on this one. The bank witness was amazing and was difficult to cross examine. These bank lawyers were also as good as they get. They were top notch lawyers worth every penny they were paid. We started trial at 9:30 AM and went until 5:30 PM. I’ve never had to fight so hard for a foreclosure client because I was up against a real foreclosure machine on the other side. They were prepared like I have never seen bank lawyers prepared. Sounding gloomy at this point? Ok, I’ll get to the end. We won and saved this lady’s house.

I can not stop thinking about this case. Why would Wells Fargo go to such lengths to do this to this woman? I simply can not figure this out. If someone would have just gone into the payment system and recoded one payment that they did not code properly, this whole mess could have been avoided. Our client wrote so many letters and gave them notice of this so many times. If they would have taken two seconds to fix this, Wells Fargo would have a performing loan, this elderly woman would be in her house and making her mortgage payments, and it would have been perfect for everyone. Its just amazing to me that they would double down in this situation instead of just doing the right thing.

This case is a perfect example of why I do what I do. This elderly client was not looking for a free house, she was not looking to take advantage of anyone, nor was she a strategic defaulter. She simply wanted a bi-weekly payment that was promised to her. The bank received more than enough money to pay for her mortgage payment the two months she made the bi-weekly payments, so the bank never lost one penny. Yet, here’s another example of a big bank going rogue. I am so thankful that this client hired us and trusted us to aggressively defend her. I am also happy that we came through for her.

If you or someone you know is facing a foreclosure, the foreclosure defense attorneys at Loan Lawyers are ready to help you. We offer foreclosure defense, bankruptcy, loan modification, short sales, and (my personal favorite) we sue banks and bank lawyers. Call us right now at 1-888-FIGHT-13 to schedule your free consultation in Broward, Miami-Dade or Palm Beach county.

These clients are a husband and wife who immigrated this country many years ago. They worked hard, paid their taxes, and were living the American dream. Then one day they had trouble paying their mortgage and BB&T sued them for foreclosure. They came into the office and when we looked at the documents, something did not smell right. After some time digging, we uncovered that someone at BB&T bank forged the wife’s signature to the note and mortgage. This is why choosing a law firm that pays attention to every detail is so crucial.

So, we sued BB&T right back. So far, the offered the release the clients from the note and mortgage and give them the house for free. We said great, but that’s not enough. Then they offered $5,000 on top. I’m not sure if that is supposed to be an insult or a joke, but BB&T’s offer is going to need many more zeros before we can talk about settling this case. We are happy to put this case in front of a jury and let them decide what this case is worth. I can assure you, BB&T Bank, that the jury will award substantially more than $5,000. Pony up or we’ll see you at trial.

A client came to Loan Lawyers regarding a bank foreclosure case what was filed against him over two years ago. He never responded to the foreclosure, and therefore received a default against him which means that he would no longer be able to defend the lawsuit. To complicate things even more he was also recently sued for foreclosure by his Home Owners Association (“HOA”). The HOA case was being very aggressively litigated and they were moving fast to take the house. We immediately filed an answer in the HOA case and propounded discovery for them to respond to. In the meantime, Loan Lawyers worked very hard and was successful in getting to his 2 year old default vacated in the case from the bank. Our client was very happy wit the result, but still very concerned that he may lose his home to the HOA.

After analyzing the situation Loan Lawyers advised our client that the HOA had wrongfully filed a foreclosure claim against him, since the bank had already previously filed their case. We immediately filed a Motion to Dismiss against the HOA alleging that they lacked proper Subject Matter Jurisdiction to file the lawsuit. Not only did we get the HOA to dismiss their foreclosure lawsuit with prejudice, but we are in the process of getting our client’s attorney fees reimbursed for having to defend the wrongful foreclosure. To sweeten the win even more we have since sued the HOA under the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collections Practices Act) which will result in our client’s receiving a nice check for the improper foreclosure. Our client is breathing easy now and very grateful to G-d and to his top notch legal team at Loan Lawyers.

Despondent and desperate, a widow retained Loan Lawyers in April of this year (2016). The widow’s deceased husband had been the sole borrower on the promissory note for the mortgage encumbering the couple’s homestead real property. Due to the financial strain ensuing from the loss of her husband, the widow was unable to consistently maintain her deceased husband’s mortgage payments, and the mortgage lender eventually commenced foreclosure proceedings against her home. Although she was naturally still residing in the home after her husband’s passing, the mortgage lender persisted in thwarting the widow’s attempts to save her home because she was not a signatory on the promissory note. Despite having been represented by two different foreclosure defense attorneys since 2011, our client’s prior legal counsel unfortunately were unable to achieve a result that entailed her retaining the property. Indeed, relinquished to the erroneous belief that she had no available recourse to save her home, the widow ultimately consented to foreclosure judgment being entered against her, in exchange for a mere few thousand dollars in relocation expenses offered by the mortgage lender.