Foreclosure Lawyer Interviews

Newport Beach, CA The US home foreclosure crisis and the practice of bundling mortgage debt into securitized bonds seems to be a never-ending source of problems. Now, a consumer fraud class-action suit, filed in US District Court, claims that JPMorgan Chase routinely uses fake documents to misrepresent itself as having standing in bankruptcy cases. Rather than bare the cost of proving the chain of ownership, Chase simply manufactures documents. "We've been able to track the JPMorgan cases from Santa Barbara, down to Orange County, Riverside and Los Angeles," says attorney Joe Roberts, "and you see the same nonsense documents being filed, and you see the judges biting on it, and you see the attorneys lying down and letting JPMorgan assert itself."

Philadelphia, PA Got to hand it to attorney John Narkin. He's got this foreclosure crisis thing figured out—well, near as anyone can figure it out. The 113-page class-action suit on behalf of distressed homeowners filed by Narkin's firm, BHN Law in Philly, lays out the whole sorry story in amazing detail, complete with links to video clips.

Jacksonville, FL Florida attorney Chip Parker says he is "appalled" by the way the fundamental rules of law are being bent, twisted and even ignored in order to ram foreclosures through the courts at lightning speed. "One day you could be the victim of an auto accident, or accused of a crime—there could be a number of reasons why you find you need access to the legal system," says Parker from Parker & DuFresne in Jacksonville. "If the rules of law are capable of being bent during this foreclosure crisis—then it means the rule of law can be bent at anytime!"

Washington, D.C. Banks are being hit with a hailstorm of class actions for being quick to trigger foreclosures without actually reviewing the facts of the case. So-called "robo-signers" from GMAC and several other lenders have admitted in depositions that they signed thousands of foreclosure affidavits without ever reading the files.