There must be a lot of it if it is news that a judge actually bothers to check that the paperwork is correct:
He has tossed out 46 of the 102 foreclosure motions that have come before him in the last two years. And his often scathing decisions, peppered with allusions to the Croesus-like wealth of bank presidents, have attracted the respectful attention of judges and lawyers from Florida to Ohio to California. At recent judicial conferences in Chicago and Arizona, several panelists praised his rulings as a possible national model.
His opinions, too, have been greeted by a cry of affront from a bank official or two, who say this judge stands in the way of what is rightfully theirs. HSBC bank appealed a recent ruling, saying he had set a “dangerous precedent” by acting as “both judge and jury,” throwing out cases even when homeowners had not responded to foreclosure motions….
“To the extent that judges examine these papers, they find exactly the same errors that Judge Schack does,” said Katherine M. Porter, a visiting professor at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a national expert in consumer credit law. “His rulings are hardly revolutionary; it’s unusual only because we so rarely hold large corporations to the rules.”
It’s not just large corporations, of course. The various levels of government are seldom held accountable to following the law or having its motions thrown out for a failure to comply by the applicable rules. The point, of course, is that there is no longer even much of a pretense at the rule of law in the United States. That has been replaced with rule by bureaucratic dictate.
It’s good to know there are still a few judges who are honorable. The key phrase from the article is this: “Justice Schack’s take is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove ownership, it cannot foreclose.”
“Hardly revolutionary” is correct. One would assume that this was always the case; one would, of course, be wrong. Indeed, the fact that a requirement to prove ownership is considered an unusual position only shows how endemic the acceptance of blatantly illegal behavior has become.