Tag: legal

Thomas Cox – hero of 2010

Seth Anderson0 comment

A Little to the Left

Perhaps hero too strong a word, but still, Thomas Cox should be feted by all those steam-rolled by bankers in pursuit of profits…

Mr. Cox1 vowed to a colleague that he would expose GMAC’s process and its limited signing officer, Jeffrey Stephan. A lawyer in another foreclosure case had already deposed Mr. Stephan, but Mr. Cox wanted to take the questioning much further. In June, he got his chance. A few weeks later, he spelled out in a court filing what he had learned from the robo-signer:

“When Stephan says in an affidavit that he has personal knowledge of the facts stated in his affidavits, he doesn’t. When he says that he has custody and control of the loan documents, he doesn’t. When he says that he is attaching ‘a true and accurate’ copy of a note or a mortgage, he has no idea if that is so, because he does not look at the exhibits. When he makes any other statement of fact, he has no idea if it is true. When the notary says that Stephan appeared before him or her, he didn’t.”

GMAC’s reaction to the deposition was to hire two new law firms, including Mr. Aromando’s firm, among the most prominent in the state. They argued that what Mrs. Bradbury and her lawyers were doing was simply a “dodge”: she had not paid her mortgage and should be evicted.

They also said that Mr. Cox, despite working pro bono, had taken the deposition “to prejudice and influence the public” against GMAC for his own commercial benefit. They asked that the transcript be deleted from any blog that had posted it and that it be put under court seal.

In a ruling late last month, Judge Powers said that GMAC, despite its expensive legal talent and the fact that it got “a second bite of the apple” by filing amended foreclosure papers, still could not get this eviction right.

Even the amended documents did not bother to include the actual street address of the property it was trying to seize — reason enough, the judge wrote, to reject the request for immediate foreclosure without a trial.

But Judge Powers went further than that, saying that GMAC had been admonished in a Florida court for using robo-signers four years ago but had persisted. “It is well past the time for such practices to end,” he wrote, adding that GMAC had acted “in bad faith” by submitting Mr. Stephan’s material:

“Filing such a document without significant regard for its accuracy, which the court in ordinary circumstances may never be able to investigate or otherwise verify, is a serious and troubling matter.”

(click to continue reading Out of Maine, a National Foreclosure Freeze – NYTimes.com.)

You can read the Judge’s order here, and Jeffrey Stephan’s deposition here (both PDF files)

Footnotes:
  1. Thomas A. Cox, a retired lawyer who volunteers at Pine Tree [↩]

Missouri Judges Take Prison Costs Into Account in Sentencing

Seth Anderson0 comment

This policy has all sorts of implications, both positive and negative. Will lesser sentences be meted out for deserving criminals because of their inherent costs? What about non-violent offenders?  Isn’t probation and counseling cheaper than incarceration?

Prairie Restoration in Progress

ST. LOUIS — When judges here sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the State of Missouri. Enlarge This Image

If For someone convicted of endangering the welfare of a child, for instance, a judge might now learn that a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770. A second-degree robber, a judge could be told, would carry a price tag of less than $9,000 for five years of intensive probation, but more than $50,000 for a comparable prison sentence and parole afterward. The bill for a murderer’s 30-year prison term: $504,690.

 

(click to continue reading Missouri Judges Take Prison Costs Into Account in Sentencing – NYTimes.com.)

Our nation’s jails are full beyond the point of exploding, yet we keep locking up folks as a first resort. Not mentioned in this article ((except in passing) is how many drug cases are adjudicated, and at what cost. How much do we spend locking up teenagers caught with a couple of grams of marijuana?

Reading between the lines in the article, seems as if many officials are uncomfortable with the implications of the policy, so instead of changing the system, they are just going to cease discussing costs. Ignore the big picture, instead maintain the status quo.

Still, money worries loom. This year, in an annual address, even the chief justice of Missouri’s Supreme Court, William Ray Price Jr., warned that the system would be threatened if budget cuts persisted.

“Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders,” he said.

Mr. McCulloch, the prosecutor, said the state’s prisons were filled with anything but harmless people. “You show me the college kid with a perfect record and a dime bag of weed who has been sent to prison, and I’ll get him out,” he said. “Find me him.”

When Missouri lawmakers meet next year, Mr. McCulloch says that he expects he and others may push to abolish the sentencing commission.

The Royal Courts of Justice

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The Royal Courts of Justice
The Royal Courts of Justice, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

London. Lightbox version


From Wikipedia:

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is the building in London which houses the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Courts within the building are open to the public although there may be some restrictions depending upon the nature of the cases being heard. The building is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic style and was designed by George Edmund Street, a solicitor turned architect. It was built in the 1870s. The Royal Courts of Justice were opened by Queen Victoria in December 1882. It is on The Strand, in the City of Westminster, near the border with the City of London (Temple Bar) and the London Borough of Camden. It is surrounded by the four Inns of Court and London School of Economics. The nearest tube stations are Chancery Lane and Temple.

Those who do not have legal representation may receive some assistance within the court building. There is a Citizens Advice Bureau based within the Main Hall, which provides free, confidential, and impartial advice by appointment to anyone who is a litigant in person in the courts. There is also a Personal Support Unit where litigants in person can get emotional support and practical information about what happens in court.

Actually right across the street from Twining’s

Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent

Seth Anderson0 comment

Good! Stupid that genes have ever been patented. Science may have discovered specific genes, but they didn’t create them from scratch. Why should evolutionary processes be privatized by large companies?

DNA Bricks

A federal judge on Monday struck down patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. The decision, if upheld, could throw into doubt the patents covering thousands of human genes and reshape the law of intellectual property
Enlarge This Image

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York joined with individual patients and medical organizations to challenge the patents last May: they argued that genes, products of nature, fall outside of the realm of things that can be patented. The patents, they argued, stifle research and innovation and limit testing options.

Myriad Genetics, the company that holds the patents with the University of Utah Research Foundation, asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the work of isolating the DNA from the body transforms it and makes it patentable. Such patents, it said, have been granted for decades; the Supreme Court upheld patents on living organisms in 1980. In fact, many in the patent field had predicted the courts would throw out the suit.

Judge Sweet, however, ruled that the patents were “improperly granted” because they involved a “law of nature.” He said that many critics of gene patents considered the idea that isolating a gene made it patentable “a ‘lawyer’s trick’ that circumvents the prohibition on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result.”

The case could have far-reaching implications. About 20 percent of human genes have been patented, and multibillion-dollar industries have been built atop the intellectual property rights that the patents grant.

[Click to continue reading Judge Invalidates Human Gene Patent – NYTimes.com]

Patents are well and good, in some instances, but not every step that science makes should be controlled by corporations, and exploited for profit.

Reading Around on February 23rd through February 24th

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Leaning in the Wind - Ilford Delta

A few interesting links collected February 23rd through February 24th: