Wrong doing makes you sick
10-29-11
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
What the Costumes Reveal
Joe Nocera
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/opinion/what-the-costumes-reveal.html?...
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On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
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Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Joe Nocera
The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.
That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.
When we spoke later, she added that the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set. “There is this really cavalier attitude,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.” Nor does the firm try to help people get mortgage modifications; the pressure, always, is to foreclose. I told her I wanted to post the photos on The Times’s Web site so that readers could see them. She agreed, but asked to remain anonymous because she said she fears retaliation.
Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.
A second picture shows a coffin with a picture of a woman whose eyes have been cut out. A sign on the coffin reads: “Rest in Peace. Crazy Susie.” The reference is to Susan Chana Lask, a lawyer who had filed a class-action suit against Steven J. Baum — and had posted a YouTube video denouncing the firm’s foreclosure practices. “She was a thorn in their side,” said my source.
A third photograph shows a corner of Baum’s office decorated to look like a row of foreclosed homes. Another shows a sign that reads, “Baum Estates” — needless to say, it’s also full of foreclosed houses. Most of the other pictures show either mock homeless camps or mock foreclosure signs — or both. My source told me that not every Baum department used the party to make fun of the troubled homeowners they made their living suing. But some clearly did. The adjective she’d used when she sent them to me — “appalling” — struck me as exactly right.
These pictures are hardly the first piece of evidence that the Baum firm treats homeowners shabbily — or that it uses dubious legal practices to do so. It is under investigation by the New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. It recently agreed to pay $2 million to resolve an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether the firm had “filed misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts in New York.” (In the press release announcing the settlement, Baum acknowledged only that “it occasionally made inadvertent errors.”)
MFY Legal Services, which defends homeowners, and Harwood Feffer, a large class-action firm, have filed a class-action suit claiming that Steven J. Baum has consistently failed to file certain papers that are necessary to allow for a state-mandated settlement conference that can lead to a modification. Judge Arthur Schack of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn once described Baum’s foreclosure filings as “operating in a parallel mortgage universe, unrelated to the real universe.” (My source told me that one Baum employee dressed up as Judge Schack at a previous Halloween party.)
I saw the firm operate up close when I wrote several columns about Lilla Roberts, a 73-year-old homeowner who had spent three years in foreclosure hell. Although she had a steady income and was a good candidate for a modification, the Baum firm treated her mercilessly.
When I called a press spokesman for Steven J. Baum to ask about the photographs, he sent me a statement a few hours later. “It has been suggested that some employees dress in ... attire that mocks or attempts to belittle the plight of those who have lost their homes,” the statement read. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” It described this column as “another attempt by The New York Times to attack our firm and our work.”
I encourage you to look at the photographs with this column on the Web. Then judge for yourself the veracity of Steven J. Baum’s denial.
5-5-10
Wall Street, Main Street
Law Offices of Steven J. Baum loses another of JPMorgan Chase for lack of standing
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By: Nicholas M. Moccia
Law Offices of Robert E. Brown, P.C.
http://www.wallstreetmainstreet.com/2010/05/law-offices-of-steven-j-baum-loses.html
It appears the attorneys at the Law Offices of Steven J. Baum have developed an exquisite expertise in commencing foreclosure actions for Plaintiffs who lack standing to foreclose. It appears, moreover, that Baum's attorneys are developing a masochistic tendency to find themselves in front of Justice Arthur M. Schack whenever this is the case.
In JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. v George 2010 NY Slip Op 50786(U), Justice Schack once again vacated a judgment of foreclosure and sale and dismissed a foreclosure action for lack of standing. Perhaps not surprisingly, Baum's attorneys did not even bother to oppose the Defendant’s order to show cause from which Justice Schack’s decision arose.
Justice Schack notes that in order to have standing to commence a foreclosure action, the Plaintiff must demonstrate (1) the existence of the mortgage and the mortgage note, (2) ownership of the mortgage, and (3) the defendant's default in payment. Schack humorously observes that the Plaintiff's complaint reveals an utter lack of awareness as to where the mortgage and note were even recorded, let alone whether the Plaintiff was the holder of the note at the time the foreclosure action was commenced. Justice Schack writes:
Then, plaintiff CHASE commenced the instant foreclosure action by filing the summons, complaint and notice of pendency with the Office of the Kings County Clerk on April 7, 2006. Plaintiff CHASE, in ¶ 1 of the instant complaint, alleges that it "is the holder of a mortgage bearing date the 17th day of September 2004 executed by GERTRUDE GEORGE to secure the sum of $381,500.00 and recorded at Instrument No. 2005000206826 in the Office of the Clerk of the County of KINGS, on the 11th day of April 2005; said mortgage is to be duly assigned by an Assignment to be recorded in the Office of the Clerk of KINGS County [sic] [Emphasis added]." Plaintiff's counsel, who has commenced thousands of foreclosures in Kings County, should be aware that mortgages in Kings County are recorded in the City Register of the City of New York, not the Office of the Kings County Clerk.
Worse still, Justice Schack points out that the foreclosure action was commenced before the note and mortgage were actually assigned to Chase—this means Chase did not in fact own the note and mortgagewhen they started the foreclosure. As Justice Schack notes, "Standing to sue is critical to the proper functioning of the judicial system. It is a threshold issue. If standing is denied, the pathway to the courthouse is blocked. The plaintiff who has standing, however, may cross the threshold and seek judicial redress." (Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, Inc. v Pataki, 100 NY2d 801 812 [2003], cert denied 540 US 1017 [2003]). Without standing, a case is dead on arrival.
Nevertheless, it seems Baum's attorneys have a mental block on the standing issue, and trip up with surprising regularity in this regard. See Option One Mortg. Corp. v. Duke, 2009 WL 2505751 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2009)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Buffalo, NY, for Plaintiff); HSBC Bank USA, N.A. v. Vasquez, 2009 WL 2581672 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2009)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Buffalo, for Plaintiff); Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp. v. Randolph Bowling, 2009 WL 4893940 (Sup. Ct. 2009)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Amherst, for Plaintiff); U.S. Bank Nat. Ass'n v. White, 2009 WL 159588, 1 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2009)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Amherst, for Plaintiff); U.S. Bank Nat. Ass'n v. Bernard, 2008 WL 383814 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2008)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Amherst, for Plaintiff); Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Farmer, 2008 WL 2309006 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2008)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Buffalo, for Plaintiff); Ameriquest Mortg. Co. v. Basevich, 2007 WL 1815992, 1 (Sup. Ct. Kings County 2007)(dismissed for lack of standing)(brought by Steven J. Baum, PC, Amherst, NY, for Plaintiff).
Mr. Baum, you might consider making your team of attorneys take a field trip to the Brooklyn City Register—the address is 210 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York. Mapquest is a beautiful thing.