Big Win In Kansas City

To date, although we have had a few clients in the Jackson County area, most of our cases have been in southwest Missouri, around Springfield, or in the St. Louis/St. Charles area. However, we have recently started to get a number of cases in Kansas City and the surrounding area. And now we have a great win to report.

We were hired to represent a man and his family. They had already been foreclosed, and one week prior, he was trying to buy additional time before the Unlawful Detainer hearing. We spoke and created a strategy, and one week after being hired, we put the strategy into play.

Unlawful Detainer cases in Missouri are very hard to win for the Defendants. The law is old and unwieldy, and not at all suited to modern law, especially when considering all the clouded title issues that surround modern foreclosure law. We have been successful in the past by showing problems with the ownership on the deed (such as the cases where Fannie Mae has lied about its ownership of properties, still our easiest route), and by succesfully defending the Summary Judgment motions. When the big banks can't win on Summary Judgment, they are in trouble, because they can't fill in the blanks.

And that's what happened here. We were able to show how little they could show. They didn't have the goods. And we had a judge with the backbone to stand up to this.

We have had some really great cases recently, using correct Missouri law and their own procedures against them. If you have a case you would like to discuss with us, please call us toll free at 877-945-3952 or send us a message on this site.

Victory in St. Louis

As a part of recent concerns voiced by our office and media invited by our office, the St. Louis City Circuit Clerk's Office has announced that they will once again force foreclosure sales to be held outside of the courthouse, where they can be taped and viewed in the harsh light of day (I added the adjective). This means that the foreclosure mills cannot hide inside, but will have to subject their sales to public scrutiny. (We always just taped anyway, but that's a different story).

We are changing and moving the conversation. It is an exciting time to work on these cases ...

Success

In the past two months, due to a tremendous amount of work from myself, my wonderful staff and some great clients, we have gotten some awesome results. We have won summary judgment motions that had always previously been lost, stopped dozens of foreclosures, had the opposition dismiss cases days before jury trial so that we couldn't tear apart their lies.

We have been helped by the industry, in that the AHMSI case versus DocX absolutely validates many of our long-standing complaints about the industry.

I feel that the next few months are going to be great ones. We have some cases that I can't wait to try, and are seeing through more and more of the industry's lies.

After my time of study, I also believe that there is an approach to this area of law that is neither too erudite nor too off-the-wall to win. We simply must apply the same techniques that have worked for great trial lawyers for decades.

If you're afraid of losing your home or realizing that you have already been defrauded by this terror mill, please call us at 877-945-3952 or contact us through our main website, www.foreclosurelawllc.com. There is strength in numbers, and we want to help you!

Storytelling

Without a doubt, the most difficult part of the foreclosure crisis from my perspective is trying to boil it down to a story the jury can get behind and run with.

From the start, this vat of evil has been uncovered by detail-oriented people with big brains like Neil Garfield. That is great and helpful for detailing the 95 Theses that Martin Luther nailed to the door of the church (I've got 95 Theses but a @#&$# ain't one), but it's less effective for telling a story that the jury can take from the courtroom to the front page.

I am beginning to distill it by working on my second master petition that is much more focused and less lawyerly than the first. After noticing numerous discrepancies between statements on major blogs and actual LAW, I am a little more willing to step out in my own knowledge than I previously was. But I would still value any feedback on how to make this complex set of facts more juror-friendly.

More Shenanigans

My latest letter:

Dear Ms. Springer:

Thank you for your quick response to my letter.

Your letter lets me know two things:

1. You are letting the CLIENT control this process instead of controlling it yourself as a trustee should do;

2. You have absolutely no authority to proceed.

The Assignment of Deed of Trust is signed by Topako Love. The Appointment of Successor Trustee was signed by Liquinda Allotey. Much as Liquinda would like to claim that she was Vice-President of a mortgage company in Dallas, Texas, she was not. She was in chilly Minnesota, and was not only not the Vice-President of Saxon Mortgage, she was also not the Vice-President of a number of other banks as well.

Topako Love, who sounds like a female villain from a James Bond movie, was also not only Vice-President of multiple institutions, but also had several different signatures, which you can find online by only googling his name.

Both of these people, if they exist, worked for Lender Processing Services in Minnesota. They weren't Vice-Presidents. They were schmucks. These people did not have actual knowledge of these files. They didn't even work in the state where the company works. They were people who signed all day long to kick people out of their houses. I do not even know if they exist.

I did not subscribe to some incredibly expensive database to discover this information. I googled. YOU are claiming to be the Trustee. You should have done this months ago. You have a fiduciary duty to both sides. I am now giving you ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, per the Killion case, that you have NO authority to proceed here.

Please cancel this sale immediately.

Sincerely,



Dale Wiley

Think Long and Hard Before Filing Bankruptcy

The number one question I get asked when talking about the foreclosure defense strategy that we use is:

What about bankruptcy?

Bankruptcy is a very useful tool, one which our founding fathers were brilliant to give us. It is great for eliminating unsecured debt and many other things. But if your main or sole need is to keep your house, it doesn't work as well.

First, when you go into bankruptcy, you're going to have to start by admitting that you owe that $200,000 or whatever in mortgage debt. You only owe that if someone has the right to collect that. Why admit it?

Second, you then have to turn around and lay your assets on the table. If the trustee feels like there's something they can do, they are going to strip the house, do what I do, and try to get the house for the unsecured creditors. Great for them, bubkis for you.

Lastly, if the cases in front of Judge Federman are any indicator, the creditors are doing a much better job of putting together a paper trail in bankruptcies, as opposed to just a regular foreclosure. This means, to the extent that there is paperwork to be found, they are getting ready for it. This means that they will attempt to show that they are a secured creditor who should be allowed to release the automatic stay and sell the house.

Or, of course, you could reaffirm the debt. Which I'm sure they'd be happy for you to do.

For those who crave finality this may be a good offer. But those looking to push forward and show how little the banks actually have in the way of paperwork, we recommend that you call us and work with us on our strategy.

Our Reply to Their Ridiculousness

Here's the text of a brief going on file in one of the cases today.

INTERVENOR'S SUR-REPLY TO MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Plaintiff’s counsel created a twelve-page paean to the billable hour in its response to Intervenor’s previous motion. The reply mainly covers cases cited by Defendant as if they were being briefed for certiorari to the Supreme Court or made into a mini-series, and yet manages only one paragraph in a dozen pages on the only subject that matters:

The Plaintiff in this case did not bid on the property in question, did not buy the property at the sale and is lying or suffering from some sort of surreal malady if it claims it did.

The only response that the research wing could manage to contrive to this seemingly highly relevant point – a statement so important that it comprised its first contention in their Statement of Uncontroverted Facts – is that the deed itself is prima facie evidence of the facts recited therein.

“Prima facie evidence” is such evidence which, although not compelling a verdict for the party whose contention it supports, "is sufficient to satisfy the burden of proof to support a verdict in favor of the party by whom it is introduced when not rebutted by other evidence." State, et. al v. Hogg, 466 S.W.2d 167 (Mo.App.Spr. 1971). See also Cavic v. Missouri Research Laboratories, Inc., Mo.App., 416 S.W.2d 6, 8-9(4); City of Jackson ex rel. Hoffmeister v. LaChance, Mo.App., 372 S.W.2d 479, 482; 32A C.J.S. Evidence § 1016, l.c. 624-625.

Prima facie evidence, then, is not dispositive.  It is merely a presumption that may be rebutted, just as any other evidence may be rebutted.  In this case, for example, an actual video of the sale itself, with no mention of Plaintiff and successful bidding by another entity entirely, is enough to rebut the prima facie presumption, and establish another presumption: That the Successor Trustee lied or at least was somehow radically mistaken when making the deed, and that the Plaintiff has no standing whatsoever to bring this action (N.B.: Intervenor would note that the Plaintiff made the same “mistake” on the same day with at least one other property).

Intervenor would also note two additional points:

1.     The Statement of Uncontroverted Fact as raised by Plaintiff was not that the property was conveyed by deed to Plaintiff; it was that the Plaintiff had purchased the property at the foreclosure sale.  In other words, the importance to the Plaintiff and its learned counsel was not the deed itself, but the purchase, which Intervenor can rebut at the place and hour of Plaintiff’s chosing (Intervenor respectfully submits a drive-in movie theater, but will gladly settle for a courtroom).

2.     The Plaintiff in this matter has been seized with crippling bouts of memory loss in this case before.  Despite the phalanx of letters written by Intervenor’s wordy counsel, and his annoying presence at the sale, Plaintiff’s counsel (whom, it should not be forgotten, has showed up in this same movie as the servicer, servicer’s counsel, MERS, Successor Trustee, bidder for the servicer, Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s attorney) miraculously forgot that they should name the only person living in the house, to whom they were familiar with as being a fiduciary named and signing on the Deed of Trust.  Intervenor should have been named and served as an original party, but for the bouts of senility on the other side of this action.

The Motion for Summary Judgment is frivolous, and should be denied.

The Moment In Which I Become Michael Douglas In Falling Down

The bank is trying to foreclose on a property where the debt was $183,000 and they have been paid TWO HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.  I tried to be nice, but it didn't take.

Dear Mr. Foreclosure Mill Lawyer (FML for short to make sure that, like Bon Scott, we protect the guilty):

I am feeling the need to memorialize our conversation.

First of all, you said "we we" more than a drunken French chorus girl.  Your "we" is you and your client, xxxxxx. The only "we" in this case should include my clients, xxxxxxxxxxx, since YOU AS TRUSTEE HAVE FIDUCIARY DUTIES TO THEM.  Why does the "trust" in "trustee" not mean anything?

You are preparing to foreclose on a property you have been paid $205,000 on.  A week ago, you told me this hadn't happened.  Now I provide you proof, and you indicate that they need to pay more.  I point out that I wrote your office months ago indicating that at that time we would have settled for the $205,000, and you tell me you didn't get it, and then have no explanation for why you got it and did not respond EVER.  Your office obviously got this communication, as you were more than able to respond to my concern about the lack of appointment of successor trustee.  By the way, I would love to see a copy of that document.  Please forward it to me.

Your office then sent ex-parte communication to the xxxxxxxx on numerous occasions on behalf of the bank, xxxxxx.

Despite our multiple request, there has never been any documentation on:

• the location of the original note
• the assignments and allonges
• a history of transfers
• payment history

None of that.  Zilch. Zero. Nada. Zip.  These are clear duties of the trustee.  You have not done any of them.

For a moment, let's get theoretical.  Years ago, the Missouri legislature agreed to swap out JUDGES (judicial foreclosure) for TRUSTEES (non-judicial foreclosure).  They gave them DUTIES.  These duties were because they were standing between the bank and total bloody chaos, which is what we are experiencing today.  Why?  Because the trustees are HELPING the banks.  That is not your role!  You are supposed to make sure that the bank HAS A RIGHT TO FORECLOSE IN THE FIRST PLACE.  This was different a hundred years ago when one bank would have held the paper the whole time, but now you have the equivalent of Escape From New York in every one of these bollixed-up files.  Why is this so hard to understand?

Cancel the sale, Mr. FML. It is the ONLY thing you can do as trustee.

Sincerely,



Dale Wiley

Idiocy

Here's my latest response to these ninnies, who keep sending me non-responsive correspondence and expecting me to go away:


Foreclosure Mill Lawyer

Blank Rome LLP

Re: XXXXX

Loan Number Ending in: XXXXX

Dear Mr. FML:

Thank you for your letter of May 20.

I do not believe that you have the note.  I do not believe that any of these "assignments" shown on the note are valid, or were done in a timely manner.  I am not even sure if Michelle Sjolander exists, because your clients sure haven't been able to produce her in other cases.

Please tell me where the note is.  I understand that you're not going to send it to me Pony Express.  But we want to know so that we can venture to its location like pilgrims to Canterbury and examine it ourselves.  We promise to be accompanied by BAC's armed guards and wear white cotton gloves when we do so.

A copy of a hundred dollar U.S. note is not the same as the real thing.  Try spending it at the mall.  We need to know where the real note is, and examine it ourselves.

Please provide me with a complete MERS history on the note, and a detailed explanation on how you claim that FHLMC is the "holder" thereof.

Sincerely,

Dale Wiley

cc: client

The Judge

I was talking to a lawyer the other day about the foreclosure crisis.  He is an excellent attorney in his field, but like almost all lawyers, he knows very little about this are of the law. As we were discussing the ins and outs, I came up with an analogy that I was surprised had eluded me earlier:

The Trustee in a non-judicial foreclosure is the judge.

There are two kinds of foreclosure in America:

1. Judicial Foreclosure:  The bank must take its case in front of a JUDGE before they can foreclose.  This system is used in states like New York and Florida.

2. Non-Judicial Foreclosure: In these states, a TRUSTEE is appointed, so that the property does NOT have to go in front of a judge.  This is the law in Missouri, California, Arizona and many other states.

In those states, there is no court-appointed neutral, but there is a person appointed by the parties themselves who is supposed to be neutral:  The Trustee.  The thought was obviously that this person could be trusted to look out for both sides.

• But what if the judge is also the lawyer for one side?
• What if the judge continually fails to make the party asking for foreclosure to produce the paperwork showing that they have the right to do so?

That's exactly what's happening right now.  What we do is help bring your case in front of a REAL judge, not one paid exclusively by the banks, not one helping to try to take your home from you.

Here come THAT judge.

Video

This is the amazing video done for us to explain the foreclosure crisis.

Meeting Mrs. Green

Linda Green is a very elusive lady. She signed hundreds of thousands of documents, which I'm sure would make your hand hurt. She signed so many documents, it made her signature look quite different, depending on when she signed them. Here are some examples:

And she was busy.  Boy, was she.  Why, she was working for many banks, and with most of them, she was Vice President!  Here are some of the ones she worked for:

• Wells Fargo
• MERS
• American Home Mortgage Acceptance
• Option One Mortgage
• Bank of America
• Argent Mortgage Company by Citi Residential Lending 
• Sand Canyon Corporation

 She was a very busy lady.

Mrs. Green has appeared in one of my cases.  We have very politely asked the bank who is claiming their interest under Mrs. Green's signature to give us the house in the next three weeks before we bring the Unmanned Predator Drones of the law down upon their Pakistani compound.  By May 22, we'll know if they'll make the right decision.

If you know anyone affected by Mrs. Green, please let us know.  Because I sure do want to meet her.





 

The Pursuit

I'm several months into this search now. Every time I think I've seen the worst thing the foreclosure mills can bring, I soon find I'm wrong. They do not care about law, or decency. They are getting paid twice on every file to kick you out of your house, whether they have any right to do so.

So let's assume worst case scenario for a minute. Let's just assume that you bought a house you really couldn't afford. Let's look at what they did.

1. The banks set up a system of mortgage brokers who had quick access to their funds. They paid those people well to originate these mortgages, which they, in turn, sold on to investors. The brokers got paid; the banks got paid. They didn't care about the end investors; they just sold them down the river.

2. The banks then got paid as servicer to send you bills and call when you were twenty seconds late. They got paid to hold the funds in trust. They got paid in this large variety of roles, all the time you were seeing the rate climb on your ARM. (It probably felt like a spider climbing right up your arm)

3. The banks bought credit-default swaps so they could keep the defaults off their books. We as taxpayers bailed AIG out for making too many dumb bets.

4. The banks took on stupid loans and stupid purchases. We bailed them out.

5. Now, the banks was Fannie Mae and any other agency who insured these loans to pay up, and they want their houses back. They're willing to do illegal things to get them back.

AND THEY WANT TO MAKE YOU THE VILLAIN? You didn't say yes to that loan; you didn't say yes to the worst US economy in a century. You may have talked yourself into believing their lies about your abilites, but if that's all you did, DO YOU DESERVE TO LOSE YOUR HOUSE TO SOMEONE WHO CANNOT PROVE THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO IT?

I say no. They are the ones who should bear the risk on all those properties they can't prove. If they can prove it, fine. But if they can't, then it's time to make them pay for their mistakes, instead of you making one last payment. You've given them your money, you've given them your credit. Let's help you keep your house.

Dead Letter Department

I will get back to chronology in a minute.  But I have to share with you the INCREDIBLE letter I was forced to write tonight.  I simply cannot believe the stuff that these firms are doing.  Here it is:

I am writing to confirm the amazing things I heard on our phone call today, and what I read upon returning to the office tonight.  Let’s start with the documents you sent first, because, frankly, they are beyond my wildest imagination.  Here’s what we have:

1. On September 24, 2008, Wells Fargo (whom you call your client) appoints various lawyers from your firm (including SK and JM) as power of attorney over Wells Fargo.
2. On May 26, 2009, JM, a LAWYER IN YOUR FIRM, uses that power of attorney to appoint YOUR FIRM as the Successor Trustee in this case.
3. On June 4, 2009 (Which, you will notice, is AFTER your appointment as Successor Trustee), SK, a LAWYER IN YOUR FIRM, assigns the mortgage to Wells Fargo from MERS and claims that she is an ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF MERS! 

In this transaction, your firm is a) the lender; b) the lawyer for the lender; c) the seller and d) the trustee.

What part of this incredible transaction does not scream “straw man”? What part of this gives you ANY ability to perform your duties with any degree of integrity?

And you are going to stop this sale?

Now to the phone call. I requested the ability to look at the original note, you indicated to me that you have done nothing to investigate whether your supposed client, as you referred to them, Wells Fargo, actually has ever held such a document. You do not even have the original in your file. You cannot determine if this was a MERS note or not. And yet you are attempting to foreclose on my client's home at the end of this week. In addition, you referred to this process as the "chain of custody". It is referred to as the chain of title, Mr. F. I asked you what you have done to determine if you, as the fiduciary of both parties, have any rights to foreclose on this property, and you indicated that you have done nothing. You have just simply taken it as a referral from your client, Wells Fargo.

This is the entire problem with this process, Mr. F. You and I both know that that mortgage is not held by Wells Fargo. It is held by a REMIC trust, and you must supply us with its name. It is a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to not do so.

This sale should be stopped immediately. This is not a request to postpone it for 30 days. This is a request to cease and desist all attempts to foreclose on this property. You have no right to do so, and if you continue to do so this will only be added to the laundry list of complaints that we already have on your firm and this entire process.

Finally, Mr. F, you asked me one question today which gave me pause.  You asked me why shouldn’t you foreclose.  Well, in two letters, I have given you your answer.  This is as clear a conflict of interest as I have ever seen in over twelve years of practicing law.  It is completely beyond the pale.  If you haven’t realized that your firm can’t act in the same transaction as:

1. Attorney for Wells Fargo
2. Wells Fargo Itself via Power of Attorney
3. An officer of MERS and
4. Successor Trustee (with duties to both sides)

I hope that I have now convinced you of this fact.  If I haven’t, well, at least I tried.

Please let me know at your earliest convenience whether or not you will do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Dale Wiley

THREE: Fight The Power Of Sale

After I discovered that Unnamed was not even requiring the bank to come to its own foreclosure sale, I went back and thought about old cases.  Of course, foreclosure had become a hot topic over the last couple of years, and we had stopped several sales from happening.  I thought of several files where I had run up against Unnamed, and then other foreclosure files where I had the same set of issues with other banks and trustees.

What did all of this mean? If the trustees consistently ran the foreclosure sales wrong, there was the potential that all of those sales could be invalid.  Unnamed was one of the largest foreclosure mills in Missouri; if their foreclosures were all tossed, it would mean thousands of properties in limbo.  But it also meant that thousands of families had been wrongly displaced, taken from their homes by people who had no legal right to do so.

I had my client bring in all of his paperwork and began sorting through it.  The banks on most home loans had the borrowers sign hundreds of papers: Affidavits stating that John P. Doe was the same as J.P. Doe and John Phillip Doe.  Stupid stuff.  Legal stuff.  Stuff that would make a one-armed paper pusher very tired.

But I noticed another major flaw:

All of these Harvard-educated lawyers and Stanford MBAs had forgotten simple legal steps to creating the Deed of Trust and Note.  Imagine that:  The two most important documents, and it almost seemed like they were afterthoughts.

For example:  Most of the Deeds of Trust came up with all kinds of different definitions:  Lender means this, Note Holder means that.  Understandable.  That's something almost any good contract does.  But these Deeds of Trust almost forget to mention the Power of Sale.

The Power of Sale is different from the Power of Love.  It has nothing to do with Huey Lewis.  It is different from the Power of Greyskull, and bears no resemblance to Power Station, the mid-80s "super group" featuring various hair-sprayed members of Duran-Duran and such. Simply put, it is the clause that allows the bank and a trustee to sell your home without going to court.

Mortgage documents are just contracts.  You can put in there what you want.  If you agree to wear  orange shoes and green pants in exchange for a lower rate, well, have at it.  ( N.B.: Banks won't go for this.  I already tried.)  And if your contract includes a Power of Sale, well, then there's a Power of Sale.

But that's an IF.  If a mortgage lender does a crappy job in writing a Power of Sale, that's their fault.  In legalese, we say, "Contracts are construed against the drafter."  That's a fancy (and more tactful) way of saying, "They wrote the damned thing. If they screwed it up, it's their fault."

And to my great surprise, what I kept running into was that the writers of the standard Deeds of Trust treated the Power of Sale like their crazy drunk uncle.  They barely mentioned it.   In the main deeds of trust used by most big banks (called RESPA documents), the Power of Sale is mentioned a grand total of:

-- wait for it --

One time.

What?  The whole purpose of having a Deed of Trust in a non-foreclosure state is to have the Power of Sale.  It's Rosebud.  It's what Willis was talking about.  You want to be able to foreclose without having to go to court.  That's the whole point.  And yet, in the most important of the 12, 453 documents you were required to sign in order to close on your house, the most important feature gets ONE MENTION!

And it gets better.  It says, "If the Lender invokes the power of sale".

Huh?  Are you kidding me?  Think about this:

The Lender is whoever originates the mortgage.  Most of the time with the big banks, they held onto the loan for the time it takes to open a jar of pickles.  Then they dropped it like it was hot, collected a nice fee, and then walked the heck away.

Maybe this doesn't sound big to you.  But they understand that future people are potentially going to hold the note who aren't the Lender.  They call them the Note Holder (inventive, I know). They know someone else may bug you to get the payment.  They're called the Loan Servicer.  There's a little language in one place that MIGHT go in the favor of the banks on this, saying that the agreement "benefits" others who are assigned, but that's weak stuff.

To show you how easy it would have been to correct this problem, watch this:

THE WAY THAT IT IS:  "If the Lender invokes the power of sale".

THEY WAY THAT IT EASILY COULD HAVE BEEN:  "If the Lender, the Note Holder, the Loan Servicer, or any other holder in due course invokes the power of sale".

Was that hard? No.  Would you have signed it to get your house.  Ummm ... yes.  You would have admitted to masterminding Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance to get that house.  You would have signed.

I was now of the opinion that each mortgage now had major flaws.  Foreclosures were likely called by the wrong people, and were perhaps devoid of the power of sale for anyone but the lender.

This was getting fun.

TWO: Breaking the Chain

All right, let's make this simple.

Missouri is a non-judicial foreclosure state.

What that means is that when you borrow money to buy property, you most likely sign papers that give the lender the chance to get the property back if you don't pay for it, or make it smell too much like cat pee so the neighbors rat on you, or whatever.  You can breach the agreement in a number of ways.  Not pay taxes, not keep insurance, or give your interest to someone else without okaying it with the lender first.

In a non-foreclosure state, when you sign your paperwork, you actually deed it to a trustee.  Note in that word "trustee" the word "trust."  That means in latin or something "dude or female dude you can trust." And the trustee holds it until you pay for the property, and then he or she deeds it back to you.  If you don't pay for it, then you have already okayed the fact that the trustee can sell it without having to go to court, like would have to be done in a state where foreclosures (known as "judicial foreclosures") would have to be taken to court and run before a judge.

In many cases, this works great.  Has for many years.  It keeps cases out of court that don't need to be there. But something changed that made the system go haywire.

For most of recorded history, when someone borrows money on a house, here's what happened:

• Person borrows money from Bank.
• Bank holds mortgage to Person's house.
• Bank records the deed, so the whole world (or at least anyone who cares) could go down to the courthouse and find out who owns it.
• Bank takes payments, makes the interest rate agreed upon.

This is not sexy.  It will never be the subject of a made-for-TV movie starring Valerie Bertinelli.  But it WORKS.  It STILL works.  But as we moved into the past two decades, it wasn't enough.

For many years, not everyone could get a loan.  The reason was sometimes their past credit, sometimes their work record, sometimes their income or assets, sometimes the value of the property they wanted to borrow against.  This meant the banks could loan at lower rates, because they felt good they knew how often they were going to get burned.

But there were so many people that WANTED to own homes.  And it seemed like such a waste for them not to have them.  The lenders who tapped into this market in the 1990s spoke about it in very patriotic terms:  They said were doing everyone a favor by lending money to people who really couldn't afford it.  They talked a lot about the value of home ownership.  People like Angelo Mozilo, who started the toxic waste dump of a company known as Countrywide, was just one of those people.

But they couldn't take these loans to regular banks.  Those banks had their patterns of lending, and the people and the properties in question were clearly not in them.  So they created an entirely new system, of "mortgage-backed securities."

Mortgage-backed securities was a process of taking a large number of loans and pooling them all together.  The idea was that based on the background and credit history of those borrowing the money, you could divide the loans into different groups, and charge different rates for them.

If you were getting people like Jane Juicebox, with great credit scores and properties with great appraisals, you got paid a lower interest rate.  If you took Freddie Forty-Ounce who just lost his job at the pawn shop, you got a lot higher interest rate, because you were taking a bigger risk.

Problem was, Freddie really couldn't afford that house and that rate.  And to top it off, Freddie got sold the loan by an unscrupulous mortgage broker who:

• Got a shady appraiser to inflate the value of the home;
• Lied about how much Freddie really made; and
• Didn't tell Freddie that his rate would start changing in six months, and would no longer be that low rate that he was initially promised.

So banks and school districts and pension plans bought tiny slivers of Freddie's loan.  Freddie was out smoking a joint and hitting on teenagers again, and he forgot that he had a loan payment due.  Freddie had some choice words for the debt collectors, and then when he saw that the interest rate -- and his payment! -- was going up, he said screw it, invited his friends over for a big party, painted a few pentangles on the wall, then threw deuces up on his way out the door.

And the investors, who had forgotten that the sweet return they were getting was due in large part to the fact that Freddie had never paid a loan in his life, were now screwed.

Problem was, the mortgage broker who sold Freddie the loan was gone.  So was the lender that made the original deal.  And the people who broke these mortgages into a million pieces were not really real estate people, and so they didn't know how to handle a mortgage.

It would have been easy for them to do.  After Freddie signed his paperwork, the bank held the interest in his property.  When the bank transferred that interest to one of the loan pools, they should have made a deed and recorded it at the courthouse, just like the first one was done, and told the world, "Hot Mess Loan Pool Number 69 now owns your loan.  We're no longer involved."  Then if Hot Mess sold it off, they would record a deed and say, "Suckers Unlimited now owns your loan, Freddie and anyone else who cares. Peace Out."

But they didn't do that.  They just trusted that by saying that someone else "serviced" the loan (kinda sounds massage parlor, doesn't it?), that was all they needed to do.  They took all of the loans, worth tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and did nothing to follow up on them.

But then all those loans went bad.  Lindsey Lohan at Happy Hour bad.  Freddie moved to East St. Louis and started work as a director at a strip club. And now someone had to try to foreclose on the house.

So they hired a "foreclosure mill," who did things similar to what Unnamed did in this case, and overlooked the fact that there was no paperwork and no authority for the "servicer" to call for a foreclosure.  They went ahead and sold the house at the courthouse steps back to the bank, who could now put it back on its books as an "asset."

In this entry, I've obviously exaggerated Freddie to make a point about the way the loans were processed.  But most of the loans were given to people who in good faith thought they could make this work.  Then the interest rates went up, or somebody lost a job.  And they found themselves in the position of being foreclosed on by a bank and a trustee who they naturally assumed were telling them the truth.

They were wrong to assume this.

ONE: Stumbled Upon ...

Sometimes, you're just in the right place at the right time.

I got a message from my secretary mid-morning on an early November day last year, 2010.  I was heading to meet a client about a serious custody case, but I saw that an old client had called, so I called him on the way.

It was a beautiful, clear-skyed Friday.  The leaves were turning, maybe a little later than they had when I was a kid, and I was driving the curvy roads down to southern Stone County, enjoying the drive and the late-fall colors that draped the hillsides.

After a couple of cell-phone missed connections, I got a hold of my guy.  He told me that his dad's property, long the source of contention, was to be sold on the courthouse steps in about 45 minutes.  Was there any way I could be there to help them buy a little time as they tried frantically to get the money together?

Normally, a lawyer can't do anything in 45 minutes except ask three questions or blow his nose.  I have stopped foreclosures in the past in a very short time, but generally a very short time meant a couple of days, at the least.  But I like to try to be creative, so I thought of what I could do.

I told him that I couldn't, that I was more than 45 minutes away. But I had an idea.  I called my assistant Stevie, and asked him if he could make the ten-minute drive to the courthouse.

Stevie is a world-class guitar player and an ascerbic wit.  If you gave him a birthday cake, he would still look like he was about to hit you.  He conquered the guitar years ago, and now it speaks for him like his own language, one you've heard before. If there is a musical playground in heaven and I get to pick a band, my snobby musical self would pick Stevie as my guitar player over Richard Thompson or Tom Verlaine or Don Rich or Eddie Van Halen or Jeff Beck, guitarists whom I love dearly.  He plays fast and smart and on the edge, and I'm pretty sure he could kick any of the other guitarists' asses as well.  He's my Man Friday, and he's good at handling bad situations.

We probably generated ten phone calls between the three of us, and Stevie made it in time. When he got down there, just as I was to go into my meeting, he called me with a really strange piece of information.

"There's only one person here."

That one person was a representative for Unnamed (we'll get to that later), a big-city law firm who handle probably a quarter of the foreclosures in the state of Missouri.  We had met before on a number of occasions, and I was neither a Facebook friend, nor on their Christmas card list.  I believed, and still believe, that they have a huge conflict of interest in all of the cases they do, but I had never really seen it as any more than that.

Unnamed was the attorney for the banks, but would also have themselves appointed as the trustee in the foreclosure.  Then, they would push to foreclose as quickly as possible.  To me, this was a BIG problem, because the trustee, under tons of Missouri law, was supposed to have duties to both the borrower AND the lender.  How can you do your duty to the borrower when you're acting like the US Army trying to hunt down Saddam Hussein?

We had told them this, over and over, starting way back in 2005.  This is a conflict, dear boys.  This is a conflict. Dude.  Seriously.  You've got a conflict.

We had told it to them in at least three prior cases.  We had written it.  We had said it to them in person.  Sky writing.  Smoke signals.  Semaphore.  But it was no use.  They still called the banks "our client."  No, hoss, you've got TWO clients here.  Mine's just the one without the money and with the home that you're trying to steal.

Each time, we had been successful at stopping the foreclosure.

I talked to the woman.  She was not a lawyer. She would wait ten minutes, maybe fifteen.  That was all she could do.  After that, she would have to call the sale.  That was not unreasonable, I thought.  She had other people's houses to take and miles to go before she slept.

Where was the representative for the bank, I asked.

I couldn't believe what I heard in response.

She was the representative for the bank.  She would be bidding in the property.

WHAT?  I nearly fell over.

I couldn't believe it.  It might be one thing to refer to one party as your client and still do a good job at your job, but now I was hearing that they weren't even requiring the bank to be there at the sale!  Did they have a range of authority?  If someone else bid would they come back with another?

How can you have duties to both sides, come to a sale, and then act at the bidder and the seller and leave the other party, literally, out in the cold?

I talked to Stevie again.  GET THIS ON TAPE!  Thank God for video-equipped cell phones.  He taped the whole sale, which was like a scene out of Becket, with a woman essentially talking to herself, bidder and trustee and seller.

Now it all made sense.  This wasn't an omission on Unnamed's part.  This was proof that they not neutral, they were partisan.

Now I had something to work with.