Did Foreclosure Referee Get Transferred Because Of Bank Complaints?

This article highlights what goes on behind the scenes in foreclosure courts using foreclosure referees all over the U.S.

Foreclosure mill lawyers use their deep pockets to intimidate judges and foreclosure referees even in a state like New York that has some the most consumer-friendly courts in the U.S.

The article was originally published on Freelance Journalist Dan Wise’s website, WiseLawNY last week. For nearly thirty years, Wise covered the legal scene in New York City for the New York Law Journal.

Dan Wise

I have come into possession of a copy of an internal e-mail from a court attorney to a top official at the Office of Court Administration that paints an unsettling picture of bank influence in the handling of foreclosure cases in Brooklyn.

The e-mail was from Deborah Goldstein, a court attorney at the Supreme Court in Brooklyn, who for four years had been supervising conferences required by state law between banks and homeowners facing foreclosure. In her-email, Goldstein asked Judge Lawrence K. Marks, the number two official in charge of court administration throughout New York, to stop an imminent plan to move her to a pool of lawyers whose job is to help judges draft opinions.

In her e-mail, Goldstein advised Marks that Lawrence S. Knipel, the administrative judge in charge of civil cases at the Brooklyn court, was moving her out of her mini-courtroom after having received complaints “verbally made at a private meeting” with lawyers who represent banks at the settlement conferences, without providing her “any [of those] complaint(s) in writing or an opportunity to respond.”

Goldstein’s appeal was unavailing, and she was re-assigned to desk duties five days later on April 22, 2013.

Read more here