October 8, 2009
The Associated Press
MIAMI — A judge who routinely granted extensions in foreclosure cases for compassionate reasons has been chastised by a state appeals court, which said her rulings amounted to an abuse of discretion.
The Third District Court of Appeal said “benevolence and compassion” were not legally sufficient grounds for Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr to allow a Miami couple an extra month to try and sell their home before a foreclosure sale.
The appeals judge’s called her decisions “an abuse of discretion in the most basic sense of that term.”
Schurr had granted the one-month extension in the case of Joseph and Blanca Doyle because, she explained in court, “I give extensions on these because I don’t want anybody to lose their house.”
She went on: “Businesses are failing. People are losing money in the stock market.
You know, unemployment is high. It’s just everybody knows that we are in a bad time right now and I hate to see anybody lose their home.”
The bank involved, Republic Federal Bank, appealed in part because officials there hoped the court would give Miami-Dade County judges “some guidance” on granting extensions, bank attorney Charles M. Rosenberg told the Daily Business Review for a story published Thursday.
In its ruling for the bank, the appeals judges quoted from a well-known 1921 judicial process work by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, who wrote that a judge must not “yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence” and is “not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.”
“He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles,” Cardozo wrote.
Schurr declined comment, citing judicial rules preventing her from discussing specific cases.
The Doyles’ house sold at foreclosure auction last week for $1.3 million.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20091008/NEWS01/91008064/1002/RSS01
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment