Turns Out You DO Work for the Firm!

Morning!

Did you know you work in a soul-sucking business environment that encourages risk-taking on behalf of clients because your firm can make more money delaying resolution, bickering over stupid discovery disputes, and litigating everything until there's nothing left no matter how picayune?

And that's coming from a fancy-dancy UM perfesser of ethics:

He said large, multinational law firms like Greenberg are driven by an "eat-what-you-kill compensation system that incentivizes risk-taking in transactions and litigation."

Greenberg started in 1967 as a Miami transactional boutique. After 10 high growth years, it now has 1,750 lawyers in 35 offices around the world.

Referring to the sanctions in the TD Bank case, Alfieri said, "This kind of institutional failure raises hard questions of culture, compliance and institutional regulation for Greenberg and hundreds of other Big Law firms and likewise for regulatory bodies like The Florida Bar and the American Bar Association."

On the other hand, no associate at this firm has ever failed the Bar exam!

On a happier note, Judge Bailey has done as fine a job as possible under dire budgetary restraints in dealing with the foreclosure crisis plaguing our State.

Here she answers questions by email for the Herald and concludes thusly:

Q. From your vantage point, who is responsible for the foreclosure crisis?

I deal with the cases that are in front of me. Moral judgment gets you nowhere. There is plenty of blame to go around. The banks shouldn’t have made the loans. The borrowers shouldn’t have taken them. It was a huge shell game with loans getting sold and repackaged into securities, with no responsibility. Everyone thought that somebody else should be the one to say ‘no.’’’ 

Smart judge.

Finally, Herald political reporter Marc Caputo, who is improving, wrote an article over the weekend in which he repeatedly used the phrase "Obamacare" as a neutral term for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

When I asked Marc about it, he kindly referred to a recent Obama ad as evidence the phrase is now the MSM consensus term of choice -- completely neutral, purely descriptive.

Now I recognize there has been much debate over how to deal with what began as a schoolyard pejorative.

And some Obamaites and even Obama himself have attempted to defiantly reframe the word.

I'm ok with all that, though for me "Obamacare" reeks of Frank Luntz focus-grouped "HillaryCare" and represents a further slide into collective Idiocracy.

But Marc, did you miss that whole debate?

Or are you saying the debate is over?

Business Court -- Yay or Nay?

With Judge Freeman passing the complex business litigation torch to Judges Bailey and Rodriguez, the question inevitably arises:

Is the darn thing any good?

In the Yay column stands my pal Mike Higer, (I'm pretty sure that's him above) who says they are making some changes in 2012 to better improve how the courts operate, but in general they are working well:

"Business courts have accomplished exactly what the lawyers in the business community wanted to see occur," says Higer — "to get a judge whose more proficient and efficient in handling business disputes." 

Not everyone agrees:

Lawyers say several factors have left room for improvement, however. "There’s a perception that cases were moving too slowly and decisions were taking longer than hoped to get decided," says Jim Murphy, an attorney with Shook Hardy & Bacon in Tampa. Murphy says much of the problem has stemmed from funding issues — the business courts, he says, didn’t get the kind of support staff and other help to enable them to work through cases more quickly. "These are complicated cases that require research and active case managing, and the resources we initially had envisioned were not there," he says. "I think the caseloads were more than anticipated." 

My own take is I love the concept, but the execution needs work.

Judge Freeman of course is the best, but the procedural rules are clunky and sometimes favor form over function.

Still, it beats waiting behind several thousand foreclosure proceedings in order to get two minutes with the Judge.


What say you?

Judge Bailey to Foreclosure Lawyers: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!

Transcript Miami

I believe the legal term is "a righteous arse-kicking."

(Thanks to Matt Weidner for posting).

Court Discovers 15,000 unserved foreclosures

On the cover of today’s Daily Business Review is an article which reports that Miami-Dade chief administrative judge, Jennifer D. Bailey has discovered that there are 15,000 foreclosure cases filed in 2009 in which the lender has not served the defendant homeowner. Service of Process is the act of having a process server or sheriff physically hand deliver a copy of the lawsuit to the Defendant (in foreclosure cases the primary defendant is the homeowner). A plaintiff (in foreclosure cases the lender) has 120 days to serve the Defendant. If the Plaintiff serves the Defendant after 120 days without getting an extension of time, in advance, from the Court, the service of process is invalid and the case is subject to dismissal.

We recommend that if a homeowner is served with a foreclosure complaint the homeowner check the Court docket to determine when the case was filed and check to see if service was completed within 120 days.

Shuster and Saben is a five attorney litigation law firm that defends homeowners in foreclose and seek monetary damages for victims of predatory lending and other mortgage law violations. We are available for free consultation at our offices in Miami and Plantation and have freelance paralegals to meet with homeowners in Lee, Collier, and Brevard county. Homeowners with questions can reach our foreclosure defense department at foreclosuredefenselaw@gmail.com