Posted by Madison Backhouse on July 13, 2011
Our Rubidoux foreclosure defense lawyers know technical flaws in foreclosure paperwork have gotten a lot of media attention lately. The robo-signing scandal was at its heart about fraudulent paperwork, and as a result, more state court judges have been willing to seriously consider allegations of wrongdoing by lenders, or even dismiss improperly supported cases. So we were interested to see a Massachusetts case in which technical flaws were not enough to cancel a mortgage. In Fuller v. Deutsche Bank National Trust, David and Betsy Fuller of Massachusetts built a home in 1991 and lived there for 12 years before they refinanced and later fell behind on payments. After Deutsche Bank started foreclosure proceedings and rejected their attempt to rescind the mortgage, the Fullers filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
The Fullers also filed a complaint against the bank in bankruptcy court, seeking to rescind the mortgage under Massachusetts law. They argued that the lender had failed to put the correct closing date and rescission date on the loan paperwork, and also that the lender did not provide them with required disclosures on high-cost loans.
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Posted by Madison Backhouse on July 13, 2011
As San Bernardino County foreclosure defense lawyers, we handle a lot of bankruptcies that are explicit attempts to stop a foreclosure. As a result, we know that the IRS almost always gets its money in bankruptcy court — debts to the agency are rarely dischargeable. So we were very interested in a recent Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision turning that principle on its head by assigning rental income from a debtor’s property to the mortgage lender with the primary lien, even though the IRS also claimed it. In Bloomfield State Bank v. United States, the Seventh Circuit ruled that under federal law, the mortgage holder has priority because its interest in the property existed before the IRS filed its lien.
The underlying mortgage was issued to an Indiana resident in 2004; the default happened in 2007. The mortgage contract secured the mortgage with the real estate and other interests, including an interest in rent derived from the property. The bank successfully asked the court to appoint a receiver to administer the property; that receiver collected rents totaling $82,675.
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Posted by Zachary Ogilvie on July 12, 2011
EVER since Europe’s sovereign-debt saga began, euro-area policymakers have feared that the turmoil afflicting first Greece, and then Ireland and Portugal, would engulf larger economies. Most attention had focused on Spain, a country that remains in peril. This week, however, contagion spread to another and even more alarming place: Italy.
Starting on July 8th bond markets staged an unexpected buyers’ strike, driving yields on Italian debt to their highest levels in a decade. These violent moves were mirrored by sharp falls in the shares of Italian banks. Markets calmed in mid-week amid talk that the European Central Bank had started buying peripheral debt. But the psychological damage has been done. The possibility that Italy, the euro area’s third-largest economy and the world’s third-biggest issuer of government bonds, might be sucked into the debt crisis cannot now be denied.
The sell-off was in many respects overdone. Italy’s
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Posted by Zachary Ogilvie on July 12, 2011
GLOBAL oil production posted its biggest increase since 2004 last year but it was a relatively weak performer in a bumper year for energy growth, according to BP’s latest annual Statistical Review of World Energy. Although oil production grew by 2.2% in 2010, oil consumption grew by 3.1% and energy demand across the board shot ahead by 5.6%, the biggest annual gain since 1973.
Growth was above its long-term trend in every region of the world and almost every fuel reached record levels of use (see chart). Coal consumption grew by 7.6%; gas by 7.4%; hydroelectricity by 5.3%; other renewables by 15.5% (though from a titchy base). The only fuel not consumed at record levels was uranium: although nuclear power grew a little, it still fell short of its 2006 level, a high-water mark which, after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, looks set to stand for some time.
Part of this is cyclical. As Christof Rühl, BP’s chief economist, notes, energy demand tends to fall faster than GDP when things go wrong, and grows faster when the situation improves. That
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