FREELANCE PARALEGAL SERVICES
  • Home Page
  • About Us
  • Paralegal/Legal Assistants
    • On Research
    • Services
  • The Courts and Pro Se Litigants
    • UPL "Unauthorized Practice of Law"
  • Documents
  • Our Other Sites
  • The Constitution
  • Pro Se Blog
  • Pro Se Forum

Our New Forums Section

2/5/2013

1 Comment

 
We have begun a forum section.  We would love it, if you wanted to join up and share w
1 Comment

The Bank With The Most Homes in the End WINS!!!

1/14/2013

6 Comments

 
You ever wonder what the Banks are going to do with all those houses, when no one will be left that can get a home loan?  Seems renting them is one choice.
Hell, in DeKalb County, Georgia where we live, they are charged over $100 per month, per home, and they are supposed to have the homes boarded up.  Well, we know how that goes, they don't board the homes up, and probably don't bother with collecting on the revenue.

DeKalb County kind of sux, if you know what I mean...
6 Comments

The Litte Advocacy Group That Persuade You to File Suit

8/21/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture

Picture
Picture

     For a while, I have had a sneaking suspicion that many of the foreclosure "rescue" and "advocacy groups" have had the banks, or some other entity involved with them, setting up websites claiming the can show you how to save your home from foreclosure.  They all want a lot of money for lying to you.  They get you to file a suit in the court, and pretend to be guiding you along, for the sole purpose of making it very easy to foreclose upon you.  If the website is overly elaborate, or they charge for every little think under the sun, be wary.  When the site is too elaborate, someone else is running the operation.

​
     People who are in foreclosure cannot afford to be stupid.  If the website assures you that they can get you your house for free, turn away, ain't gonna happen.  The judges are sick to death of hearing people say that they deserve a free house.  The judges will be the first to awaken you, when they tell you "No one lives for free!"  They mean it too!
     When you file a suit into a state level court, including, but not limited to a wrongful foreclosure suit, if there is anything that can be construed as a federal claim, the bank jumps on it and yanks the case into federal court.  They "Remove" it to federal court.  Federal court is supposed to determine, whether or not, they in fact, have original jurisdiction over the complaint, due to the federal claims. 
    Now, we all know that is not the reason for creation of federal courts, but that is a story for another day.  Once the federal court, here in GA, gets the case, it is like trying to pry it from someone's cold dead hands that won't let go.  One rule is that they have to Remove the case within 30 days.
      There is what is called a Motion to Remand, where the Plaintiff would file,   within thirty (30) days to argue why it should be sent back, or Remanded.  It is extremely difficult, and if there is anything in the complaint federal i.e.:  FDCPA, TILA, or any other number of claims, forget it.
     The bank will usually Motion to Dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), and claim that   the complaint is a "shot gun pleading", or an internet complaint, or any number of  other derogatory allegations condemning the complaint.  Nine times out of ten  district court will dismiss the case.  I see attorneys get these foreclosure  cases dismissed all the time. 
     When I say attorneys, I am talking about the ones  representing the homeowners in wrongful foreclosure cases.  They are not the ones trying to get it dismissed,  they are fighting dismissal.  It is very difficult to keep one of these cases in federal court.  They are  usually dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim for which relief  can be granted.  Some people have been kept in court for four years, they could not  dismiss the complaint, but the complaint has not yet won either.  It is stalled.  For how long, I don't know.   Like a game, in which both sides are  at a point on the playing board, where neither party has any moves left, and the  Judge won't rule, because she has been promised that it will be Appealed. 
     State level cases are hard enough for a pro se litigant... the opposing party knows that between the Rules and the timelines, the pro se litigant, if not used to federal court, will cause their own case to get dismissed.

​
      That is what I hate about these damned groups.  They should tell people the  truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.   They put out the message to quit paying for your house, you can get your house for free.  Then they tell  people that they need to file a lawsuit, and hey ...here is one here that you can base your complaint on.  The complaint is filled with federal causes of action, which those people, if they know anything at all, know damned good and well, will get the case pulled into federal court and get dismissed, for any number of reasons. 
       Everyone wants to make it sounds so easy.  What everyone needs to start   asking these people is for the proof that they know how to pull the whole thing off.  Cause once your case is dismissed with prejudice, you can never, ever, bring that case with those same banks into court again.  I personally think that the banksters put the websites up to get people into court, case gets dismissed,  and that is one more homeowner, that can never take them to court again.
      If you are part of one of these groups, be careful about using a form type of complaint, because they may just wind up ending you in federal court. They prepare no one for federal court.  Then leave you hanging out to dry.  
      Remember, you can never ignore the case.  It is what it is, you may want to   file Motion to Amend the Complaint if it gets Removed to federal court, to make sure that it is pled the best possible pleadings.  No one needs to have their case dismissed, and at the same time blocked from ever being able to fight the case.  We've seen it over and over again...
0 Comments

Pro Se Blog

8/9/2009

1 Comment

 
Courts hate us, attorneys hate us...
Let us know of your experiences or concerns...
1 Comment

Welcome to the Pro Se Blog! We hope you have a pleasurable experience and will come back often

8/8/2009

6 Comments

 
Public shut out of Georgia courts
R. Robin McDonald
Daily Report
 07-03-2012

   Judges across Georgia are closing courtrooms to the general public, citing as reasons a lack of space and security  concerns.
   They are doing so even though the U.S.  Supreme Court in January 2010 vacated a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that had  upheld the closure of a DeKalb County courtroom and the removal of members of the public during jury voir dire. The U.S. justices said at the time that courtrooms should remain open to the public except in rare circumstances.
   Since then, courtroom closures have been  challenged in DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb and Towns counties in Georgia’s appellate  courts. Two weeks ago, the Southern Center for Human Rights sued the Cordele  Judicial Circuit, claiming that its superior court judges are continuing to bar  public access to court hearings despite a consent agreement in 2004 that they  would stop the practice.
   The appellate challenges to closed courtrooms across the state have garnered mixed success, but Judicial Qualifications Commission officials are concerned. Closing courtrooms, said JQC Chairman John Allen, “could be a violation” of state judicial canons “depending on the set of facts surrounding the closing.”
   JQC director Jeffrey Davis told the Daily  Report that in his work observing judges in action around the state, he is often  met at the courtroom doors by local deputies who ask for his credentials and  question why he is there.
   “I’ve personally experienced the chill that  members of the public would feel,” he said. “I’m a lawyer. It’s not that I’m  under-dressed for court.”
   Once a member of the public has passed through  courthouse metal detectors or security at a courthouse entrance, Davis said, “No  citizens should be questioned about the reason they are in a public courtroom.”
   But, he continued, “It seems to be the  modus operandi around the state for courts to have deputies who question those who are simply in the court without business before the court. People ought to be able to watch their government in action. And justice which is done in secret—or a feeling by those who are coming to the courthouse that somehow they don’t have a right to be there—chills the public’s ability not only to access the courts but also to have confidence in the judicial system.”

DeKalb County
   Last year, DeKalb State Court Judge Barbara Mobley resigned her post to end a JQC ethics investigation that included allegations she had interfered with the public’s access to a public courtroom. Mobley posted signs that restricted access to court hearings and directed court personnel to ask court observers to identify themselves and state their business, “thereby chilling the public’s right to observe matters before the court,” according to the JQC’s report to the Georgia Supreme Court.
   The Daily Report reported last year that  Mobley was one of a number of DeKalb judges who had posted signs on their courtroom doors limiting courtroom access to criminal defendants, their lawyers and alleged victims. The sign on Mobley’s door said, “We do not have space for extra people.”
   Allen told the Daily Report last week that  after Mobley resigned, he asked the DeKalb judges “to please meet and reconsider  their policy of automatically closing their courtrooms as opposed to making a  case-by-case decision.”
   “Openness of course is such a basic principle of the law in Georgia jurisprudence and U.S. constitutional jurisprudence,” Allen continued. “You erode the confidence in the integrity and fairness of the courts by closing the courts as a matter of course.”
   “Ours was just a courtesy call,” he said, “so that the conduct of the court didn’t rise to the level of being  egregious.”
    Allen said he also reminded the DeKalb bench of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Presley v. Georgia, 130 S. Ct. 721, which slapped the Georgia Supreme Court for upholding a decision by DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Linda Hunter to close her courtroom during jury selection in a criminal case. 
   In its ruling vacating the Georgia decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to a public  trial extends to the voir dire of prospective jurors and that, “Trial courts are  obligated to take every reasonable measure to accommodate public attendance at  criminal trials.”
   The decision did allow for exceptions,  holding that, “The right to an open trial may give way in certain cases to other  rights or interests, such as the accused’s right to a fair trial or the  government’s interest in inhibiting disclosure of sensitive information.”
   But, it stated, “Such circumstances are rare, however, and the balance of interests must be struck with special care.  The party seeking to close a hearing must advance an overriding interest that is  likely to be prejudiced, the closure must be no broader than necessary to  protect that interest, the trial court must consider reasonable alternatives to closing the proceeding, and it must make findings adequate to support the closure.”
   Last year, DeKalb Chief State Court Chief  Judge Wayne Purdom told the Daily Report that he posted signs limiting access to  his courtroom on days when he heard jail pleas, when numerous prisoners were in  court or on arraignment days when as many as 100 people might need seats. On  those days, he said, members of the public were only admitted “by  request.”
   While acknowledging that courtroom access “is a public right,” Purdom told the Daily Report that “regulation of entrance  to the courtroom is a case-by-case situation.” Purdom also agreed that signs  barring entry might have “a little bit of a chilling effect.” But, he continued, “I think there are limited situations where control of access is  appropriate,  although keeping the public out is not.”

 Fulton challenges 
   Last  month Atlanta attorney Brian Steel argued before the Georgia  Court of Appeals  that a judge’s decision to close a Fulton County courtroom had violated a  criminal defendant’s constitutional rights.
   Steel appealed the decision of then-Fulton  County Superior Court Judge Marvin Arrington, who in the 2009 rape trial of  Corsen Stewart apparently barred the public, including the defendant’s mother,  from the courtroom during jury voir dire in a situation nearly identical to the  DeKalb closure that led to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
   Steel, who was not Stewart’s lawyer during  the trial, said he took the case on appeal after Stewart’s mother came to see  him, told him she had been locked out of the courtroom when attorneys were  questioning potential jurors for her son’s case and burst into tears in  his  office.
   In 2010, Steel asked the Georgia Supreme  Court to overturn the 2006 Fulton County murder conviction of Travion Reed,  basing one argument  on Judge Craig Schwall Sr.’s decision to close the  courtroom during the testimony of two witnesses. Prosecutors countered that the   courtroom’s closure was warranted because the two witnesses in question feared   for their safety. A third witness in the case had been shot a short time after   the murder, and a fourth witness had been threatened with a screwdriver in an  attack that prosecutors claimed was likely linked to the defendant.
   At the time, neither Reid nor his  attorney  objected. That omission proved critical to the Georgia Supreme Court  which—three  weeks after its decision in Presley was vacated—affirmed Schwall’s  decision to  bar public access to his courtroom during the testimony.
   Steel did not represent Reed at his trial.
   In an opinion written by Justice George Carley, the high court held 6-1 that in order to prevail, Reid “must show that he was prejudiced by counsel’s decision not to object to the brief closing of the courtroom. … Indeed, to hold otherwise would encourage defense counsel to manipulate the justice system by intentionally failing to object in order to ensure an automatic reversal on appeal.”
   But Chief Justice Carol Hunstein, the lone  dissenting vote, countered that, “No reason was articulated to support closing  the courtroom” for the two witnesses when “closure was not sought for others who  not only might have been, but actually were, placed in peril because of their  testimony.”
   “The trial court’s findings were clearly  inadequate to support closure of the courtroom,” her dissent stated. “Moreover,  the trial court failed to consider any alternatives to closure,” she said.
   "Although the majority concludes that Reid  has not shown prejudice,” Hunstein concluded, “Reid is not required to do so in  order to obtain relief for a structural error which was a violation of the  public-trial right.”
   Steel said last week that “Prejudice is pretty hard to show when you’re closing a courtroom. It’s an almostu nobtainable  bar that the Supreme Court set.” Steel said that in the Stewart appeal he  argued before the state appellate court on June 13, “I’m challenging the Reid  decision. … It’s primed to have a new discussion about it.”
   Fulton County is not the only place where  Steel has challenged closed courtrooms. In 2010, Steel also asked the Court of  Appeals to overturn a Towns County defendant’s conviction because the judge  moved jury selection to a nearby church and barred the public, including the  defendant’s wife and daughter, from attending. The Court of Appeals  reversed the  conviction last March on other grounds without addressing the courtroom  closure.

 Cordele claims 
   Last  month the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta filed suit  against the  Cordele Judicial Circuit’s three superior court judges and the  sheriffs of Ben  Hill and Crisp counties in U.S. District Court in the Middle  District of Georgia  in Albany, claiming that county court officials are  systemically barring the  public from criminal court hearings that they say  should be open to the  public.
   Stephen Bright, the center’s president and  senior counsel, noted that in 2003, as part of a larger civil rights suit on  behalf of the county’s indigent defendants, the Southern Center accused circuit  officials of restricting public access to the courts. But Bright said the 2003  suit was dismissed in 2004 after circuit officials promised that courtrooms  would remain open.
  John Pridgen, chief superior court judge of  the Cordele Circuit and a defendant in both suits, has called the 2003  allegations “complete fabrications” claiming, “There was never anything  inappropriate about what we did then and what we do now.”
   Another Cordele Circuit judge noted in a  letter filed with the Southern Center’s complaint that the courtroom in the  Crisp County Law Enforcement Center is particularly small, with limited seating.
   Southern Center attorney Gerry Weber told  the Daily Report last month that the center also has received anecdotal evidence  that other courtrooms are being closed “in a lot of different places” across the  state and is launching an investigation to determine the extent of the  problem.

 ‘Keeps us free’ 
   Courtroom public access issue came to the fore in Cobb County last  year, when former Governor Roy Barnes secured the dismissal of an indictment   against the CEO of the Cobb EMC because the grand jury presentments were made  inside the new courthouse while its doors were locked and deputies barred access  via a separate catwalk entrance.
   The Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the indictment’s dismissal in March, ruling that, “The Georgia Supreme Court has held that any failure to return the indictment in open court is per se injurious  to the defendant.”
   Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice  Leah Ward Sears, who dissented in the state Supreme Court’s Presley decision,  said in an interview with the Daily Report that the U.S. Supreme Court opinion  vacating Georgia’s Presley decision “made it pretty clear … that you cannot, as  a matter of policy, close courtrooms.” In her dissent in Presley, Sears  specifically addressed arguments based on lack of space.
   “A room that is so small that it cannot  accommodate the public,” she wrote, “is a room that is too small to accommodate a constitutional criminal trial.”
   But the former chief justice, now a partner at Schiff Hardin, told the Daily Report that judges still may close a courtroom “in very narrow circumstances.” But their reasons  for doing so, “have  to be well articulated,” she said. “It has to be on a case-by-case basis … It  also has to be a last resort.”
   Sears said she doesn’t belittle judges who  struggle with issues of space and security.
   “That’s what created the majority in the  Presley case,” she said. “It wasn’t that the judges felt you should keep people  out. They saw what a problem it was in these tiny courtrooms trying to manage  things. You get very sympathetic when a trial judge is trying to … keep things  secure.”
   The issue, she explained, is one of  competing values. But to trump the value of open courtrooms, she said, “would  take some effort. … Public access is one of the cornerstones of our democracy.   It’s what keeps us free.”

Daily  Report: Public shut out of Georgia
courts


6 Comments

    Author

    James and I together make up the username NootkaBear.  We have been practicing solely as Pro Se litigants since 2004.  Pro Se litigants are treated as worth less than dirt.  That must change!

    Archives

    February 2013
    January 2013
    August 2012
    August 2009

    Archives

    February 2013
    January 2013
    August 2012
    August 2009

    Categories

    All
    Banks
    Foreclosures
    Homes

    RSS Feed

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Categories

    All
    Banks
    Foreclosures
    Homes

    Freelancers Union Member Badge

​​

A NootkaBear Legal Site, Yall Come Back Now, Ya Hear!  Copyright 2013

  • Home Page
  • About Us
  • Paralegal/Legal Assistants
    • On Research
    • Services
  • The Courts and Pro Se Litigants
    • UPL "Unauthorized Practice of Law"
  • Documents
  • Our Other Sites
  • The Constitution
  • Pro Se Blog
  • Pro Se Forum