This morning the Times ran a profile of Brooklyn State Supreme Court Judge Arthur M. Schack, who “fashions himself a judicial Don Quixote, tilting at the phalanxes of bankers, foreclosure facilitators, and lawyers who file motions by the bale.” Schack is known for tossing out foreclosure motions on technicalities: “Justice Schack, like a handful of state and federal judges, has taken a magnifying glass to the mortgage industry. In the gilded haste of the past decade, bankers handed out millions of mortgages—with terms good, bad and exotically ugly—then repackaged those loans for sale to investors from Connecticut to Singapore. Sloppiness reigned. So many papers have been lost, signatures misplaced and documents dated inaccurately that it is often not clear which bank owns the mortgage. Justice Schack’s take is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove ownership, it cannot foreclose.” Schack, who is Brooklyn born and bred, began crossing swords with banks over foreclosures in 2007, when they started to spike here. “Banks had given out loans structured to fail,” he says.
A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style [NY Times]
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