A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style

A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style

By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: August 30, 2009


The judge waves you into his chambers in the State Supreme Court building in Brooklyn, past the caveat taped to his wall — “Be sure brain in gear before engaging mouth” — and into his inner office, where foreclosure motions are piled high enough to form a minor Alpine chain.


Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times


"I don't want to put a family on the street unless it's legitimate," Justice Arthur M. Schack said.

Every week, the nation’s mightiest banks come to his court seeking to take the homes of New Yorkers who cannot pay their mortgages. And nearly as often, the judge says, they file foreclosure papers speckled with errors.

He plucks out one motion and leafs through: a Deutsche Bank representative signed an affidavit claiming to be the vice president of two different banks. His office was in Kansas City, Mo., but the signature was notarized in Texas. And the bank did not even own the mortgage when it began to foreclose on the homeowner.

The judge’s lips pucker as if he had inhaled a pickle; he rejected this one.

“I’m a little guy in Brooklyn who doesn’t belong to their country clubs, what can I tell you?” he says, adding a shrug for punctuation. “I won’t accept their comedy of errors.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/nyregion/31judge.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=nyregion

:)

May he be contagious as the flu de jour.