THE HANGING TOGETHER FOR JUSTICE FOUNDATION AND MORTGAGE JUSTICE JOINT REPORT KILL SB 1890, HB 213 AND

D HB 1149 Why All These Bills are Unconstitutional. 1. When introducing House Bill 213 Representative Passidomo made the following statement: This Bill is a combination of two foreclosure workshops held by the Civil Justice Sub Committee and is the work product of my and Representative Steubes Bill and those workshops. First to put everyones mind at Rest, contrary to the emails and phone calls that you have been receiving this Bill is not a non Judicial Foreclosure Bill. This Bill gives the Courts and the Parties to a foreclosure action the tools they need to expedite a Judicial Proceeding while at the same time guaranteeing the due process rights of all parties. There are 5 important parts of his bill that I will briefly go over and whatever questions you may have. First of all it reduces the time that a lender can seek a deficiency judgment from 5 to 2 years. It expands on the current law Order To show Cause Law that we currently have in Florida Statutes to allow any lien holder to pursue the Order to show cause provisions currently in statutes. It creates an expedited procedure for abandoned residential property. It sets forth elements that a lender must include when it files a foreclosure action. In other words we are telling the lenders dont file a foreclosure action unless you follow the steps that we have outlined in the Statute. It provides for a case management conference where any party to a foreclosure action including Condominium and Homeowners Associations, the Defendant can ask the Court to hold a conference to determine what the process of the case will be. That, Madam Chair, is the Bill. 2. Similar statements have been made by Senator Latvala and repeated by Passidomo and Stuebe at the Senate Judiciary Committee Meeting held on February 20, 2012. Various Congressional Committees, including the Meeting of the House Civil Justice Subcommittee have heard from persons in written submissions to all Members of the House and Senate and during verbal presentations when speaking in opposition to these Bills, that the proposed laws are unconstitutional, that due process rights have been abused
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by the Circuit Courts under current laws, that they constitute unconstitutional impairment of contracts, are retroactive in nature, propose to legalize the unlawful and routine practice of Banks and their attorneys when filing fraudulent and forged documents in the Circuit Courts and presented as genuine Assignments of Mortgage, indorsements of Promissory Notes and Affidavits in respect of Indebtedness and the amount and entitlements to attorneys fees. Testimony has been presented by one attorney appearing for a consumer group that she possesses depositions that prove that this latter statement is true. 3. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America and Article I Section 9 of the Florida State Constitution, both state in plain language, that No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. 4. Blacks Law, Abridged 7th Edition, 2000 defines due process as: The conduct of legal proceedings according to established rules and principles for the protection and enforcement of private rights, including notice and the right to a fair hearing before a tribunal with the power to decide the case. Also termed due process of law; due course of law. 5. Over centuries the Federal and Civil Statutes have divided the process of law between Civil and Criminal Actions. There has never been any Constitutional Statute which makes further subdivisions of law to enable a person being deprived of real property in a foreclosure action to be subject to a different standard of due process rights than a person would be afforded in an action to deprive a person of personal property. 6. In other words Due Process has only one meaning in all Criminal and Civil Actions. In Criminal Law a person is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. In Civil Law it is the legal duty of a Plaintiff to prove the Case Against a Defendant and never to shift the burden of proof from Plaintiff to Defendant. 7. Senators and Representatives are required to ascertain the accuracy of statements, written or verbal and not just to blindly accept whatever is presented when Bills are introduced and follow through the legislative process. This document demonstrates that the various presentations of these Bills have no basis in law. First, Representative Passidomo states This Bill gives the Courts and the Parties to a foreclosure action the tools they need to expedite a Judicial
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Proceeding while at the same time guaranteeing the due process rights of all parties. As an Attorney whose private practice specializes in Banking Law and Real Estate Law, she must know or should know, that Floridas Circuit Courts have used funds provided by the Legislature to severely curtail the due process rights of Defendants in Mortgage Foreclosure Cases and that her assurances that the proposed laws would guarantee the due process rights of all parties are fundamentally untrue. The proposed laws will detrimentally affect those rights and be worse than are afforded to residents in non-judicial states, in that they would remove Defendants rights to recover their properties after an unlawful or fraudulent judgment has evicted them from their home(s), but still provide for Plaintiffs to be awarded Deficiency Judgments. 8. The proposed reduction in the time a Plaintiff may claim a deficiency from 5 years to 1 year is heralded as a bonus provision for the benefit of Defendants. However, in reality the present deficiency judgments violate current Statutes, in that all foreclosure cases in this State are adjudicated in our Circuit Courts, sitting as Courts of Equity, where they are either stated, prima facie, to be, in rem, actions or are so treated by the Court processing them according to the laws and rules of equity. When monetary judgments are sought in addition to any repossession of real property such cases cannot be adjudicated in a Court of Equity. Alternatively, a separate action would be necessary to enforce any monetary judgment. Therefore this proposal is just as unconstitutional as the present practices of our Circuit Courts and in violation of our State Laws. 9. Existing Statute 702.10 is the section that Representative Passidomo references when misleading the various Committees when she states that It expands on the current law Order To show Cause Law that we currently have in Florida Statutes to allow any lien holder to pursue the Order to show cause provisions currently in statutes. 10. One of the drafters of this document has extensive experience of examining Banks forged and fraudulent documents and in monitoring compliance with the governing laws of the State of Florida and over many years has never seen a single foreclosure case where 702.10 has been invoked by a Bank Plaintiff. In fact, the procedure adopted is either to file a Motion for a Clerks Default under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.500, followed by a Motion for Summary Judgment, or to file the Motion for Summary Judgment shortly after the expiration of the initial 20 days provided to Defendants to respond to Service of Process.
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11. This suggests that there was never any need to enact 702.10, but in view of the proposed Bills expansion of that law, further raises the question of the constitutionality of that law as it currently stands. It is clearly unconstitutional as it purports to switch the responsibility for Plaintiffs to prove that they have a cause of action to Defendants to show cause why Summary Judgment should not be Ordered and to set a hearing which can take place as soon as 20 days after perfection of Service of Process, which coincides with the same period of time for Defendants to file and serve an answer and/or a paper in the action. 12. The existing Statute is clearly unconstitutional in that is shifts the burden of proof from Bank Plaintiffs to homeowner Defendants and additionally requires the Defendants to show cause without having been afforded their right to obtain legal discovery which in foreclosure cases can take months and multiple Orders to Compel by the Courts before any meaningful response as required by law can be forced out of a Bank Plaintiff. All of these existing provisions violate the due process laws of both the US and Florida Constitutions as previously stated in this document and therefore are unenforceable. 13. The proposed extension of that unconstitutional law extends to any person who holds, or even, could hold a lien to include, but not restricted to Homeowners and Condominium Owners to foreclose on a lien in front of a superior lien in further violation of centuries of real property laws in this State. Given that almost all Bank liens purport to exceed the property value and that both of these Bills are being pushed through the Florida Legislature by the Florida Bankers Association with the support of the legal representatives of the various Home and Condominium Associations, it is obvious that the intent of extending the right to demand that Defendant show cause as to why they should not be granted a [Summary] Final Judgment] is not intended to benefit the Associations, or any other lien-holder, but for the ultimate benefit of the Banks. [Further references to unconstitutional proposed legislation will be submitted to the House in respect of Representative Passidomos companion House Bill 1149, which also seeks to introduce unconstitutional laws which prejudice homeowners]. 14. To paraphrase the Florida Supreme Court, in the face of an express constitutional prohibition against any law impairing the obligation of contracts, there is no justification for this legislature to pass into law a Statute, which would grant to the State of Florida the police power to retroactively impair the mortgagors contractual bargain, absent the
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mortgagors expressed consent to its incorporation into the terms of the Contract(s). 15. In fact this unconstitutional proposed legislation creates two separate conditions, those described in the preceding paragraph and those contained within the proposed Sections that are to be applied prospectively. Because those proposed laws are partly applied prospectively, exclusively for the benefit of the Banking industry and those proposed to be imposed retroactively also benefit the Banking Industry, they are both detrimental to Defendants in Mortgage Foreclosures and by implication the property owning residents of the State of Florida and therefore they cannot be constitutionally supported. 16. In an informative and unanimous opinion that analyzed this very issue, last year in Cohn v The Grand Condominium Association (SC10-430, decided March 31, 2011), the Supreme Court of Florida ruled that: Article I, section 10 of the Florida Constitution prohibits the enactment of any "law impairing the obligation of contracts." Accordingly, because section 718.404(2) impairs the obligation of contract as applied to The Grand, we affirm the holding of the Third District below. See Pomponio v. Claridge of Pompano Condo., Inc., 378 So. 2d 774, 776 (Fla. 1979) (discussing "the principle that all laws impairing the obligations of contract are constitutionally prohibited"); Dewberry v. Auto-Owners Ins. Co., 363 So. 2d 1077, 1080 (Fla. 1978) ("It is axiomatic that subsequent legislation which diminishes the value of a contract is repugnant to our Constitution." 17. As clearly implied by the Supreme Court in Cohn, unless existing contracts such as Florida mortgages and notes contain provisions for the applicability of future changes in governing or applicable laws and procedures, these proposed statutory and procedural revisions can only be applicable to those mortgages and notes entered into with "eyes wide open" and after the effective date of such changes. Otherwise, any retroactive application of the proposed legislation would be diminishing the value to mortgagors of thousands and thousands of mortgages and notes and would certainly be repugnant to the Florida Constitution. 18. To paraphrase the Bank of New York Mellon in a current case being considered by the Florida Supreme Court, public policy demands that changes in rules applicable to mortgages must only be implemented
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prospectively. This is in stark contrast to the apparent position taken by the Florida Bankers Association when assisting in the drafting and presentation of these Bills as evidenced from the documentation supplied to the House Civil Justice Sub-Committee at its workshop session on September 20, 2011, including slides presented by Lender Processing Services [LPS]. 19. As all Members of the House and Senate have already been informed, DocX, [a former subsidiary of LPS] and its President have been indicted by the Grand Jury in Missouri on 136 Counts of forgery and production of fraudulent documents and the Nevada Attorney General indicted two midlevel employees of LPS for 606 Counts of robo-signing, specifically, directing fraudulent notarization and filing of foreclosure documents. The Nevada lawsuit claimed that LPS would allegedly help Banks forge documents that were used to foreclose on homeowners in situations where the Banks didnt have any of the required documentation to prove that they had a right to foreclose. 20. The analysis of 131 cases filed in Lee County on February 1, 2010 and already in the possession of all house and Senate Members, contains large numbers of forged documents by LPS/DocX for just the purpose for which these indictments appear to have served. 21. As a result of these indictments LPS and the other overwhelming evidence of their complicity in Bank Fraud, any documents produced by LPS, or DocX cannot be used by the State of Florida in formulating the reasons for putting either of these Bills forward or for assisting in the insertion of language into them, at least until such time as these various indictments are resolved. 22. Representative Passidomo has also presented the proposed acceleration of abandoned properties as though they were putting further burdens upon the Bank Plaintiffs. In truth, there is no need for any such law as irrespective of whether or not a property is abandoned has no bearing on the issues before a Court when a Plaintiff files a Complaint for Foreclosure. It is also necessary for legislators to understand that it is current common practice for Banks and their completely unauthorized real estate firms to declare properties as abandoned whenever it suits their purpose, irrespective of whether or not a property is secured, the yards and swimming pools are being serviced, the services are connected and the homes are furnished. The writer of this report has had personal experience of these unlawful acts.

23. Legislators also need to be cognizant that Defendants in foreclosures receive an average of 8 to 10 menacing phone calls per day from mortgage loan servicers, have experienced their due process rights trampled over by our Circuit Courts, had abandoned notices posted on their doors when they are occupied and/or secured and maintained. Abandonment of homes is the direct product of tyranny and terror being consistently applied to them by Banks who do not own the Notes and Mortgages. There are also economic consequences that will be referenced in the section of this document that evidences that speeding up the foreclosure process is not beneficial to the economy as is constantly suggested by government and bank propaganda as their justification for these abuses of our Constitutions, especially our right to enjoy life, liberty and property. 24. All Senators and Representatives are encouraged to listen to the words spoken by House Speaker, Dean Cannon at the opening of the current session of the House and to pay particular regard to his comments regarding integrity of legislators and to the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of Florida. Representative Cannon made special reference to the importance of the Separation of Powers mandated by the Florida Constitution. Article II of the Florida Constitution provides, in part; SECTION 3. Branches of government The powers of the state government shall be divided into legislative, executive and judicial branches. No person belonging to one branch shall exercise any powers appertaining to either of the other branches unless expressly provided herein. SECTION 5. Public officers. (a) No person holding any office of emolument under any foreign government, or civil office of emolument under the United States or any other state, shall hold any office of honor or of emolument under the government of this state. No person shall hold at the same time more than one office under the government of the state and the counties and municipalities therein. (b) Each state and county officer, before entering upon the duties of the office, shall give bond as required by law, and shall swear or affirm: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States and of the State of Florida; that I am duly qualified to hold office under the Constitution of the state;
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25. The wording is very clear and totally supports what has been said in this and previous reports circulated to every Member of the legislature, our Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General and every Justice who sits on the Florida Supreme Court. It appears that those persons who are in the driving seat when drafting these Bills are in breach of Article II, Section 3 of the Florida Constitution and that the oaths they gave upon admission to the House or Senate further violated section 5 when stating that, I am duly qualified to hold office under the Constitution of the State. Why Senate Bill 1890 and House Bill 213 Will Not Achieve Their Stated Objectives. 26. In view of the numerous documents, emails, letters and phone calls received by our elected representatives in recent weeks it must be apparent that strong allegations have been made by many informed people and groups that Banks are fraudulently foreclosing upon almost all of the foreclosure complaints that they file in our courts, using documents that have been forged by professional forgery factories and by foreclosure mill Members of the Florida Bar. A number of people and organizations have sought to dissuade you all not to continue to push this Bill into law based upon evidence in their possession and publicly available data and would willingly travel to Tallahassee to show and explain that the proposed laws are nothing more than an attempt by the Banksters to legalize their frauds and to do everything they can to eradicate the peoples due process rights in defense of their property ownerships, while pretending to do the very opposite. Not one of these offers has been accepted and all the various committees seem intent upon doing is to push these Bills through, irrespective of their legality and the strength of evidence which supports a need to legislate to curtail the massive and unprecedented white-collar crimes being committed by the Banking Industry and its cohorts. 27. The Senate Judiciary Committee heard a curtailed presentation by Ron Gillis at its meeting on February 20, 2011 who presented testimony to them regarding the figures drawn from Palm Beach County, which from memory stated that over 10,000 Summary Judgments in Foreclosure Cases had been Ordered but not set for sale for a period exceeding 1 year. Similar figures are known to exist in many of our highly populated counties, indicating that speeding up the foreclosure process by any means, will not achieve the stated objective of getting properties back into private hands and
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thus stimulate the economy. Once again Mr. Gillis words were totally ignored and only by the grace of two other people who had intended to testify before the Senate Committee was he able to make a 1.5 minute presentation, that would otherwise have been restricted to 30 seconds. Not one question was asked by any Senator of Mr. Gillis as has been the pattern in the House Committees where equally strong testimony has been presented. This apparent disinterest in examining evidence that proves the frauds and myths behind these proposed laws, amount to suppression of evidence and obstruction of justice, facts, that if made public would expose the myths behind the pretext of stimulating the economy. Why These Bills Will Adversely Impact Upon Floridas Economy. 28. Senator Latvala as the Sponsor of Senate Bill 1890 described Floridas economy as a three-legged stool. The three legs were Agriculture, Tourism and Housing Development. Senator Latvala appeared to be more than a little confused when he described his Bill as, the most important Bill to be enacted during this session, but later confessed that he knew nothing about its content, because he was a Printer and was relying upon Representative Stuebe who was a very good lawyer and later during the debate that he would rely upon Senator Simmons to explain the Bill to him. 29. Even if allowances are made for lack of knowledge to support his enthusiastic evaluation of the importance of the Senate Bill and if we accept his three-legged stool analysis, his own words completely destroy any credibility for his enthusiastic introduction and do not justify enacting an unconstitutional and unfair law with the words Fair Closure in its title. 30. The drafter of this letter is a qualified economist and well understands the nonsensical Keynesian theories upon which the whole subject of economics was invented as a tool to hide the interventionist policies of governments who are controlled by private central banks, which of course includes the United States. 31. For economic tendencies to have any value they can only be applied where changes in what are misleadingly called economic cycles are the result of free market forces, where the legal currency is backed by real assets and not by fiat money, printed at will by a central bank and then enforced by law upon the population as the only legal tender that is acceptable. Our present economic disaster is entirely the creation of federal government policies and is exactly in line with the circumstances that brought about the collapse of civilizations throughout the history of mankind.
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32. Against that background the myth has been heavily publicized that if we can speed up the foreclosure process the economy will somehow miraculously improve. The facts are that the greater the number of homes foreclosed upon and left in their abandoned state by the Banks who fraudulently obtained them, the smaller number of people there are who occupy those homes, the greater is the number of people who move out of State, the less frequently do the former owners of second homes or investment properties in this State come to Florida during the winter season and every part of our economy continues to decline which is exactly in line with the policy of the corporations who long ago, following the stock market crash of 1929 earned the title of Banksters. 33. Senator Lichter, during debate suggested that the real intention of the two sister Bills was to focus upon abandoned properties and to speed up the foreclosure process on those abandoned homes, when, of course, as the President of a Florida Bank, he is acutely aware that most of those abandoned and neglected homes are now illegally owned by the Banks. Their policy of not selling those homes after obtaining final Judgments is not stimulating the economy neither does it bring about his weak example of new owners at least buying a pot of paint. Neither does it help the Homeowners and Condominium Associations because the Banks again enjoy the privilege of getting the home for nothing, that they do not own, never lent any of their own, their stockholders or their customers money and have been reimbursed from multiple sources for the total amount purported to have been loaned. Those sources include government bailouts, which have crippled our national and state economies [and will continue to do so in generations to come] and by multiple payouts from insurance contracts, disguised as Derivatives in order to avoid compliance with State Insurance Regulations. 34. These are the facts, not the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, but of knowledgeable people who understand the law, finance and so-called economics and who have collective expertise and have amassed databanks of irrefutable proof of those facts. We are aware that further outpourings from Floridas unbalanced budget are proposed to be made available to help reinstate the further employment of so-called Senior Judges, who are the main operational instruments of violation of Floridians due process rights. This is a further example of the naivety of our elected Representatives, or alternatively of their belief that the people will not be able to evaluate their true purpose of continuing to put corporatism before the people, what our friends in the Tea Party, MoveOn and the Occupy Movement have all at
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various times used the descriptive term of the one percent who are profiting from the continued abuse of the ninety nine percent of the people upon whom you all rely to retain your seats of power. The Unconstitutionality of Laws Resulting From Drafts Prepared By Legislators Who Have Conflicts of Interest. 35. We have previously pointed out that it is our belief that all Members of the Florida Bar, who are Officers of the Court cannot hold office in the Florida Legislature. Those that occupy legislative offices who have not resigned their status as Officers of the Court prior to swearing or affirming their oath of acceptance of office are believed to be in violation of Article II, Sections 3 & 5 of the Florida Constitution. 36. Irrespective of the accuracy of that conclusion, major Conflict of Interest Issues frequently affect the content of new laws. House Bills 213/1149 and Senate Bill 1890 are no exception. 37. At the Meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee the Florida Bars representative in attendance waived their testimony in support of this Bill. It is therefore beyond any dispute that the Florida Bar considered that Bill to be in the interest of its Corporation and of its Members. As admitted by Representative Passidomo when introducing House Bill 213, This Bill is a combination of two foreclosure workshops held by the Civil Justice Sub Committee and is the work product of my and Representative Steubes Bill and those workshops. 38. The membership of the Civil Justice Committee to which she referred is comprised of 11 active members of the Florida Bar, 1 female Member who is married to a Polk County Circuit Court Judge and only three Members who have no obvious perceptible conflict of interest issues regarding the Florida Bar based upon the career information revealed on the Senates website. That such a major change in the law has been drafted by an overwhelming majority of the Members of the Committee, [including its Chair who possesses the unfettered right to decide which bills to put on that Committees Agenda] who are Members of the Florida Bar is beyond dispute, irrespective of whether or not those persons are unlawfully holding office as legislators simultaneously with holding office in the Judicial Branch of Floridas Government. 39. The situation is no better in the Senates Judiciary Committee, where again the Chair is an Attorney and Officer of the Court as is the Vice Chair
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and two other Senators out of a total membership of seven with another Member, Senator Richter who is the President of the First National Bank of the Gulf. Four Attorneys comprise a majority and Senator Richter who is also actively involved in formulating new laws that have benefits to either the Florida Bar and/or the Banking Industry including Senate Bill 1890 that will be advantageous to both Banking and Florida Bars interest and will be extremely detrimental to the due process rights of the citizens of the State of Florida. Those detrimental proposed laws will harm all of those citizens who are unable to finance hiring an attorney and who comprise the least legally educated persons in our State for the simple reason that they will not be able to determine without professional help that the new laws are unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. 40. The next Senate Committee Hearing to consider Senate Bill 1890 is the Banking and Insurance Committee where Senator Richter, the Bank President is the Chair, his Vice Chair is a Member of the Florida Bar and an Officer of the Court, as are two other Members, one Member is Vice President of Investments for Morgan Stanley and one is a Real Estate Broker, all of which have an actual or potential conflict of interest, a total of six out of a total Membership of eleven. 41. In conclusion of this report we believe that when added to all the other information that has been put before the various House and the Senate Judiciary Committee, is more than sufficient for both the Senate and House Bills to be withdrawn from this session and for an intensive workshop to be established, which after full consultation with all interested parties should formulate draft laws that will address all of the issues raised, especially the ones that restore the Constitutional Rights of our residents and citizens and show a determination to bring an end to fraud, forgery and corruption in our State with suitable and enhanced minimum penalties for the punishment of those crimes. Anything less is a demonstration of total disregard for the Constitutions and for the people. Respectfully submitted by, Mortgage Justice, The Hanging Together for Justice Foundation on behalf of our Members, the thousands of supporters that are bombarding the various internet sites around the State with expressions of support for the various papers previously emailed to all members of the legislature and for every resident of this State, who is being adversely affected by the deliberate destruction of our economy.
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