Garfield Thinks the Busets got Abused by Florida’s 3DC

Dear Neil Garfield:

Please pass my comments below on to J. Guggenheim, author of the recent screed at the LivingLies blog complaining about the Florida’s 3rd DCA opinion ordering the foreclosure in HSBC v Buset.

Florida’s 3rd Circuit panel echoed similar rulings all over the country as it trounced the specious arguments of the amateur litigators of HSBC v Buset.

“Amateur?” you ask. “Really? You mean Florida attorney Bruce Jacobs, and his muse attorney Neil Garfield?”

Yes, I mean EXACTLY THAT. Those attorneys are AMATEURS. Why? Because they lodged arguments that foreclosure pretense defense attorneys across the land have lodged in their failing efforts to buck against a rightful foreclosure of a mortgage loan that the borrower breached by failing to make timely payments. Only amateurs do something so stupid that has such predictable results.

Oh yes, the amateur did a fake Easter Egg hunt and found the colorful, fake eggs in the form of robosigning, fake “legal” expertise from an out-of-state attorney witness, fake unclean hands, fake inadmissibility of legitimate business records, irrelevant violations of the PSA, irrelevant broken chain of note ownership during securitization, and fake application of UCC article 9 non-negotiability of the note. He somehow got the trial court judge to embrace those absurdities, and send HSBC forth without day, forgetting the 1872 SCOTUS opinion in Carpenter v Longan that the mortgage follows the note. But the 3rd district panel sent that judge back to foreclosure law school for a much needed lesson, and ordered her to deliver a final judgment of foreclosure.

And here’s the ultra-bad news for the borrowers, the Busets: HSBC will demand and get legal fees because the Florida uniform mortgage security instrument says the borrower must pay costs of collecting the debt, and those costs include legal fees.

Guggenheim complains, “The court is methodically eroding every resource and tool a homeowner has and interfering with due process… The court is basically telling loan servicers to perfect their crime before they file to foreclose and the court will facilitate their crime spree.”

No, the court is NOT doing that. It is explaining what was never a resource or tool to begin with, and is making these points:

1. The note holder or his agent has the right to enforce the note;
2. The convolutions of robosigning and securitization have no bearing on the foreclosure process, especially when the note was endorsed in blank; and
3. If you want to beat the bank, show how the borrower got INJURED in the loan transaction.

One might mistakenly think that an attorney who specializes in foreclosure defense would become competent at item 3 above. In reality, such attorneys never develop that expertise because they prefer to bilk the client for a losing foreclosure defense than to do the study and work required to find and prove injuries in the appraising, mortgage brokering, lending, closing, and servicing processes.

For that, the borrower needs a competent MORTGAGE EXAMINER. And then maybe some adventurous attorney will develop the evidence of injuries from the examination report into cogent causes of action with which to hammer the injurious parties into a settlement, or competently argue them before a court of law and obtain monetary awards for the injured borrower.

THAT is what borrowers want from their foreclosure pretense defense attorneys. And strangely, that is what none of them seem inclined to deliver.

Meanwhile, let’s set the record straight. the 3rd District panel did not abuse the Busets. Their attorney did. He, in his blind and Quixotic arrogance, charged ahead with frivolous arguments and cost his clients a small fortune for the privilege of losing their home to foreclosure when, had he done as I recommend above, he might have won money damages for them.

Bob Hurt
Mortgage Attack