Fighting Foreclosure: Subprime Borrowers Battle (and Beat) Lenders in Court
By Amanda Stutt – Village Voice (3 Sep 2008)
Excerpt: “If the paperwork is garbage I deny it”
More and more Judges have demonstrated they are not willing to foreclose on a mortgage when they can’t determine where it originated, or who actually owns the loan.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Arthur Schack, who sees plenty of defaulted subprime loans in his courtroom, believes the Queens project “is an attempt to help people. If it can help save peoples’ homes — more power to it” he said.
Schack estimates that of approximately “Seven to eight thousand foreclosures in the past year in King’s County alone — 80 to 90 percent are subprime and in minority neighborhoods. It’s the bulk of what we get,” he said.
In a recent National Law Journal article Shack said, “I deny more foreclosures than I approve… I want to see all the paperwork before I approve it. If the paperwork is garbage, I deny it. If you’re going to take away someone’s home, it should be done properly.”
Schack recently ruled in a foreclosure suit brought by Wells Fargo that the bank “lacks the standing to foreclose” because it “failed to establish ownership of the mortgage.”
For more on Judge Schack see:
Meet Judge Arthur Schack, Foreclosure Watchdog
By Debra Cassens Weiss – ABAJournal.com (28 Jul 2008)