Who is David Stern?

The following article reminds me of the film "Usual Suspects" where Kevin Spacey played a character named Verbal, but in actuality was the evil Keiser Sose..."Who is Keiser Sose? was a classic line. The following is the story of a man known by name and not much else, David Stern; while not as violent or wealthy as the man in the movie, he seems to be just as much as an enigma.

Click here for the story....

Fallout from implosion of Stern law firm

The rule is the inverse of the factor applied to atomic weapons....for each time multiple of 7 since an explosion, the fallout is 1/10 as deadly....here, for each 7 weeks things seem to be 10 times as bad as they were before.


We have found that there are hundreds of cases being assigned out of that office and almost none of the law firms taking them on has any clue what's going on, so they are dragging things out even longer. result?


Move Move Move, we are always in a race to the Courthouse steps...

District Court Upholds Bad Faith Dismissal with attorney fees

several years ago, the Firm was among the first in the country to start looking into the "Robo-signers" and, even worse, the mortgage foreclosures that were filed in Bad Faith because the plaintiff was attempting to foreclose a mortgage that it did not have an assignment of the original documents.

We now have over 300 of these actions pending, and recently the Second District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of our right to be awarded attorney fees when a mortgage foreclosure action is dismissed because the plaintiff never had the right to sue in the first place.

The Appellate Court ruled that when a lawyer starts the foreclosure, the client must possess the right to enforce the mortgage against both the borrower and the Association. The Court made it clear that the Association was correct in resisting the foreclosure, and the trial court dismissed the lawsuit (which allowed the Association to move ahead with its own collection action against the delinquent owner and indirectly benefited the delinquent owner by having the mortgage foreclosure dismissed). However, the trial court denied attorney fees for this effort.

The Appellate Court strongly disagreed with the trial court and stated:

"Here, as in Barthlow, J.P. Morgan's mortgage foreclosure action was
unsupported by the material facts necessary to establish the claim because J.P. Morgan
lacked standing when the action was filed.  For the purpose of awarding fees under
section 57.105(1), it does not matter that J.P. Morgan may be able to prevail in a new
action to foreclose.  Thus the circuit court erred as a matter of law in concluding that 
J.P. Morgan's ability to file a new foreclosure action disentitled Country Place to an 
award of attorney's fees.  Accordingly, we reverse the circuit court's order to the extent
that it denies Country Place's motion for attorney's fees.  On remand, the circuit court
shall enter an order in accordance with section 57.105(1) awarding Country Place its
attorney's fees in the amount of $6945"

this is a significant ruling because I believe that we are the only firm who defends these bad faith mortgage foreclosures on a full contingency. The client is never exposed to attorney fees, and the dismissal of the mortgage foreclosure freeze up the Association to demand payment from the delinquent owners and in fact freeze up those owners from a foreclosure as a result of our actions, giving them more time, and perhaps freeing up more assets to be able to meet their obligations to the Association.  The cite of the case is as follows:


COUNTRY PLACE COMMUNITY
ASSOCIATION, INC., v.  J.P. MORGAN MORTGAGE
ACQUISITION CORP., Case No. 2D10-569

Are emails Official Records?

Many Directors communicate by email; it's more convenient than the telephone and aids in effective operation of the association. Recently the DBPR came down with a decision on the issue and stated that emails on the private computers of directors are not Official records (compare that to elected officials where all emails are official records)

Humphrey vs. Carriage Park Condominium Association, Inc., Case Number 2008-
04-0230 (Campbell, Final Order, March 30,2009), held as follows with respect to condominium
board emails:

The e-mails requested in this case are those existing, if at all, on the personal computers of individual directors. These are not official records of the condominium association. The property of an individual director does not become the property of the association because of his office on the board.

Just as a statement by an individual director cannot bind the board, an e-mail from or to a director, is not a record of the association. Even if directors communicate among themselves by e-mail strings or chains, about the operation of the association, the status of the electronic communication on their personal computer would not change.

Similarly, an e-mail to an individual director or to all directors as a group, addressed only to their personal computers, is not written communication to the association. This must be so because there is no obligation for a director to turn on personal computer with any regularity, or to open and read e-mails before deleting them.

Because there is no evidence the e-mails requested by Petitioners ever became official records, there can be
no penalty for failure to allow inspection of them

Order of Battle in foreclosures

As you know, it is the policy of my firm to advance all fees and costs in collections and foreclosure actions. Part of the problem we face is that we have "gone down the rabbit hole," as in Alice in Wonderland. Try as we might, it's nearly impossible to keep up with spending approximately $700 per foreclosure and out-of-pocket costs advanced by the firm to initiate foreclosures against delinquent owners. That poses the question for a number of clients, namely if they provide a cost deposit, can we get there matter faster? The answer is of course, yes. We fund our clients foreclosures out of operating income, and are spending about $5000 a week in the outgoing costs, but we still are finding it hard to keep up. Recently, a client posed an interesting question that I thought I would share with you. Here's the e-mail, followed by my response:

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Client name wrote:

Hi Bob,

Thank you for sending us your ledger and allowing us access to the new website. The information has been extremely helpful.

The board would like your recommendations on which units we should pay $700 in costs upfront to expedite the process.

Thanks again for your attention to our concerns. We look forward to continued progress with you.

Sincerely,

Hey (Client) , that is a business judgment; I really don't have the time to analyze each of your delinquencies....I suggest the following as a guide..

Are there rented units? They can all be sued at once and I can have a receiver appointed to collect the rent. I need that info stat.....

Second if there are units in mortgage foreclosure, do I have copies of all complaints? We have found that 60%++ of all foreclosures are brought in bad faith; watch this video (a link to my website, which links to about 30 YouTube videos), in fact watch all my collection videos!!! Maybe we can set aside the foreclosure, allowing a clear path to our own foreclosure...

Any delinquency not in foreclosure is an obvious choice...

As to those in foreclosure go to the Pinellas clerk's web site and see if you can tell how fast or slowly the action is going, and watch my video "foreclosure in a foreclosure", both parts.....

Let me know if I can be of further help...., Bob

CCFJ incites hate speech

I am a fan of sorts of the site, www.ccfj.net. I appreciate Jan Bergmann's point of view but I disagree with it. Recently I asked him to stop referring to "Gestapo" Boards. That type of reference has no place in disagreements about operations of community associations. When I suggested to him that it is offensive and that many of my relatives were murdered by Germans he took offense as not every German participated in the war (crimes) and there were even some "Righteous Gentiles" and people who actively opposed the Nazis....nevertheless nothing any board has ever done comes close to what the Gestapo paerticipated in.

Jan disagrees with me telling me I need a history lesson; here's my history lesson for everybody who uses "Gestapo" or "Nazi" in ANY political discourse: STOP IT! It adds nothing to the debate and incites violence towards directors who risk enough of theor time to try to do the best for their boards. Let Jan know if you agree with me...

Supreme Court and Protestants: down to one

Take a look at the Supreme Court: 22% Jewish; 11% Hispanic; 11% African American; 22% 66%...Catholic(!)....when Justice John Paul Stevens retires there will not be a single protestant on the Court. Just a generation ago it was thought that a single Catholic was too many and Heaven forbid a Latino Catholic woman!

Read this interesting article on Slate about the issue of religion and the Supreme Court...