Blogs & Resources

Stop me if you have heard this one: An attorney receives a call from a desperate potential new client. Somehow the business transaction this international client was dealing with has hit an unexpected bump in the road, and because the client is dealing with an international business set here in the U.S., the situation now requires the fine eye of an experienced business litigation attorney. The company the new client claims he works for and the debtor checks out so the attorney draws up representation papers and accepts the new client. Within no time at all the client calls and informs his lawyer a settlement to be paid to the lawyer’s trust account within days. Time is of the essence, and the client convinces the lawyer it needs the money wired as soon as the lawyer receives the money order or cashier’s check.

Aside from foreclosing on a piece of real property, a Lender may utilize numerous other methods to recoup monies left unpaid on a mortgage note and to take control of a piece of property that may be losing value based on improper management.  In this first installment piece, we will […]

For well over a century, Florida’s Constitution has made the homestead exempt from the claims of creditors. Public Health Trust v. Lopez, 531 So. 2d 946, 948 (Fla. 1988). Florida’s constitutional provisions provides one of the most debtor-friendly homestead exemptions in the country, and debtors are permitted to divert substantial assets to the purchase of new and extravagant homes that can be shielded from creditors. Florida’s Unlimited Homestead Exemption Does Have Some Limits: Part I, 77 Fla. Bar J. 60 (2003). There are, however, exceptions to the rule. This blog post will focus on one exception: the creditor’s ability to collect on homestead property located in a municipality that exceeds one-half acre.

In a standard foreclosure action, the lienholder with a first position of priority files suit to foreclose out all junior lienholders and recover the outstanding balance on a promissory note secured by the mortgage.  But what happens when a junior lienholder decides to foreclose on its lien?  The scenario is […]

Defaulted borrowers often attempt to argue that the waiver of defenses language included in loan documents is unconscionable and therefore unenforceable. However, for a contract to be held to be unenforceable under Florida law, the contract must be both procedurally and substantively unconscionable. See Golden v. Mobile Oil Corp., 882 F.2d 490, 493 (11th Cir. 1989); Gainesville Health Care Center v. Weston, 857 So. 2d 278, 284 (Fla. 1 st DCA 2003). If a contract is found to be either procedurally or substantively conscionable, then the contract is enforceable. See Eldridge v. Integrated Health Services, Inc., 805 So. 2d 982 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001)(emphasis added).

By: Charles B. Jimerson, Esq.

In 1992, Congress passed the Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act (the “Act”) which requires banks to report suspicious activities to the appropriate federal authorities. Cotton v. Privatebank and Trust Co., 235 P. Supp. 2d 809, 812 (N.D. Ill. 2002). The laudable goal of the requirements contained in the Act was to encourage banks to make such reports related to criminal activities. Id. In fact, the stated purpose of the Act is to:

require certain reports or records where they have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings, or in the conduct of intelligence or counterintelligence activities, including analysis, to protect against international terrorism. 31 U.S.C § 5311.

Florida’s Banking Statute of Frauds was enacted in order to curb a 1980’s trend of increasing lender liability lawsuits. The enactment of this statute has made it difficult for Plaintiff’s to maintain tort based claims that might otherwise flow from the written loan documents. Typically, such claims involve oral promises pertaining to breach of an oral commitment to lend, breach of an oral agreement to refinance an existing loan, breach of an oral agreement to forbear from enforcing contractual remedies or breach of an oral agreement to take certain actions in connection with the underlying loan. By requiring that loan documents be in writing for a borrower to sue a lender on those types of claims, the Banking Statute of Frauds prevents borrowers from pursuing claims based upon oral representations or understandings. The effect of the Banking Statute of Frauds is to bar tort claims that otherwise may have been colorable under common law.

In order to state a cause of action in Florida for breach of fiduciary duty, there must exist a fiduciary duty, a breach thereof, and resulting damages. Gracey v. Eaker, 837 So. 2d 348,353 (Fla. 2002). In Doe v. Evans, 814 So.2d 370 (Fla. 2002), a fiduciary relationship was characterized as follows:

Contract reformation is an equitable remedy that acts to correct an error not in the parties’ agreement but in the writing that constitutes the embodiment of that agreement. It is designed to correct a defective or erroneous instrument so that it reflects the true terms of the agreement that the parties actually reached and, at its essence, acts to correct an error not in the parties’ agreement but in the writing that constitutes the embodiment of that agreement. The doctrine has evolved such that if a document is to be reformed, it should reflect the true intention of the parties. Florida courts employ this equitable measure in order to preserve the sanctity of the contracting parties’ negotiations and the spirit of the deal.

Occasionally we represent a bank that has multiple parcels of property to foreclose upon in order to obtain pledged collateral on a non-performing loan. Regretfully, we often have to maintain separate actions and are unable to consolidate those actions because the parcels are in different counties which lie in different […]