Last fall, the practice of 'robosigning' by mortgage lenders drew outrage from advocates of people facing foreclosure. Clerks at law firms - often claiming to be senior executives at banks and other lending institutions that hired them - would sign off on hundreds or even thousands of foreclosure documents without ever reading the paperwork or verifying ownership of the mortgage notes. Attorneys Marc Dann and James Douglass say the practice amounts to fraud in a class action suit filed Tuesday against the Cincinnati law firm Lerner, Sampson and Rothfuss. Dann says an employee at the firm used manufactured and missing documentation to help Wall Street banks falsely claim they possessed mortgage notes they could then foreclose on, leaving homeowners with no recourse.
Marc Dann: When the banks who are foreclosing against them don't own the note, we're asking that that law firm that filed the case be held responsible to pay for those people's damages: for their emotional distress, many moved out of their house, many of them never got a lawyer and they've suffered huge financial losses as a result.
While the class action specifies foreclosure cases against three families - two in Shaker Heights and one in Cleveland - the suit says Lerner, Sampson and Rothfuss handles an average of 4,500 cases a year in Ohio's largest county, Cuyahoga, alone. In an email, Lerner, Sampson and Rothfuss CEO Richard Rothfuss wrote that he hadn't seen the suit, but that "any actions of an employee of our office would be well within the bounds of the law, ethical and properly authorized." The suit is one of multiple class actions pending in courts around the country over the so-called 'robosigning' practices, and is thought to be one of the first in Cuyahoga County. Marc Dann is now in private practice in Shaker Heights. This is his first highly public foray back into the court room as an attorney, not a defendant. Mhari Saito, 90.3.