Florida Court Given Deadline to Answer Charges of Rushing Foreclosures

An appellate court has given judges of the foreclosure court system in Lee County, Florida, 20 days to respond to a petition filed by the ""American Civil Liberties Union"":http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/index.cfm?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=3911 (ACLU), which alleges the county circuit courts ignore procedural safeguards in order to rush foreclosures through and clear out their backlog of cases.

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In doing so, the ACLU says local foreclosure judges ""systematically deny homeowners a fair opportunity to defend their homes against foreclosure.""

The 20th Judicial Circuit Court in Lee County handles foreclosure proceedings for the southwest Florida counties of Charlotte, Collier, Glades, and Hendry, as well as Lee.

According to the ACLU, this special “mass foreclosure docket,” which was established in December 2008, operates under rules that differ substantially from those that govern the rest of Lee County’s civil cases and was designed to speed through as many foreclosure cases as possible.

Florida’s judicial system has long been plagued with a log jam of foreclosure petitions, to the point that the ""Florida State Courts Administration"":http://www.flcourts.org/ lobbied legislators last year for millions of dollars in additional funding to bring in additional case managers and judges.

Included in documents obtained by the ACLU through a public records request filed in October were several internal emails sent among Lee County foreclosure court officials.

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One of the emails outlined the court’s specific numerical goal for clearing foreclosure cases, which the court had not previously made public. According to a court administrator, “our goal for this project is to “dispose of” the number of cases filed each month “plus 1,040 additional cases.”

In another email from September 2010, one judge says she “uniformly” denies motions to continue foreclosure cases in instances where homeowners argue there is additional discovery that needs to be undertaken or they are pursuing a settlement agreement.

“No one should ever have to go to court with the deck already stacked against them,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “Nowhere does it say someone is entitled only to the justice we have time for. We can’t allow the basic protections of due process to be the victim of judicial shortcuts.”

The ACLU’s petition is the culmination of a months-long investigation. With one in every 288 housing units in foreclosure, the organization says Lee County has the highest percentage of foreclosures in the state, arguably the epicenter of the nation’s foreclosure crisis.

ACLU officials note that the chief justice of the state Supreme Court has issued explicit instructions that reducing the backlog of foreclosure cases should not “interfere with a judge’s ability to adjudicate each case fairly on its merits.”

Despite this directive, the civil rights group says Lee County judges move through cases “at lightning speed,” sometimes seeing as many as 200 cases a day.

The Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland has ordered Lee County court officials to respond to the ACLU’s petition by May 8.

Rachel Goodman is an attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. She said, ""By ordering the circuit court to account for its practice of prioritizing speed over accuracy...the appellate court clearly recognizes that there are serious issues at play here. It is incumbent upon the courts to ensure that the rights of homeowners are protected and that they get a fair opportunity to protect their homes.""