Oppenheim Law: Rocket Docket Ends in 2015. Real Estate and Foreclosure News Now

This is foreclosure and real estate defense attorney Roy Oppenheim, from the trenches. I want to talk a little bit today about some trends that we’re seeing in the judicial landscape of the state of Florida as it relates to foreclosures. And what’s kind of interesting is that we think that the rocket docket will actually be coming to an end come the end of the year, and according to sources that we have that are pretty reliable, the legislature is not going to continue to fund those tires that previously retired and then come back and have basically been unretired for a period now of six or seven years. They were only supposed to be doing this on a temporary basis.

So we think that eventually, they’re going to actually be having a second retirement party before the end of the year. And then at the beginning of the year, we will be back to a judicial construct where you will have judges who are elected, who are accountable to the community, who will actually be adjudicating foreclosure jurisprudence. And what’s really interesting is that we’re seeing that the appellate courts around the state are starting to reaffirm the rule of law where, for a period of time, because of the number of cases that were out there, there was a tendency to ignore the rule of law and kind of go with a lore, an L-O-R-E, of trying to get these foreclosure cases through the system as fast as possible.

And now what we’re seeing is that we are looking more at courts that are concerned about rules of evidence, rules of civil procedure, standing, and basic constructs of good judicial decision making. And so we’re anticipating that 2014, for those who were able to hold out, for those people who listened to us, for those people who hunkered down, for those people who understood that they could be the last man standing, they will have their day in court and we too are looking forward for a very good 2014. So that’s what we’re seeing for the new year as we get closer. I’ll do this again, but just wanted to let you all know what’s going on in the trenches. Roy Oppenheim, have a great day.