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Bank says you don’t need a lawyer for the lawsuit. What do you do? My name is Steve Kramer. I’m a Florida foreclosure defense attorney and today I’m going to tell you a story about a lot of my clients. This is one that many of our clients share in common. And the situation is these people were served with a foreclosure lawsuit. And when you’re served, somebody knocks on the door generally and they hand you a copy of the lawsuit. And on that lawsuit is a summons. And that summons says that you have 20 days to respond to the lawsuit. And in each of these situations, our clients called up the bank and they said, “Bank, what do we do? We’re working with you. We want to work something out. We want to do a modification; we want to walk away from the house. We want to do deed in lieu; we want to do short sale. Whatever. We want to work with you.” And in every one of these situations, the bank said the same thing. “Don’t worry about the lawsuit, it’s fine. You’re talking with us. We’re not going to go ahead with the lawsuit. We’re not going to move forward. We will take care of it, don’t worry about it.” And in each of these situations, for each of our clients - and we’re not talking about a few people, we’re talking about a lot of people – our clients relied on what the bank said. They didn’t file a response. They took the bank at their word that the bank wasn’t going to proceed with the lawsuit. And in each of these situations the bank did proceed with the lawsuit. And the bank got what’s called a default. And a default is when you’re served that lawsuit and you have 20 days to respond, if you don’t respond the plaintiff can get a default against you. And that means that you automatically lose your case. Done. Lost. And in each of these cases, even though they said don’t worry about it they obtained defaults against each of these clients. And these people came to us and they were very upset because in each of these cases they relied on the bank’s word. And the bank didn’t honor their word. So what we had to do was go in to court and file what’s called a motion to set aside a default or also a motion to vacate a default. And sometimes there’s actually a judgment or a sale. But in each of these situations we went in and we filed affidavits and we told the story to the judge and to the court about what happened, about what the bank had said. Sometimes the bank would even say “Oh, you don’t need a lawyer. Don’t worry about the lawsuit. You don’t need to talk to a lawyer. We’ll take care of everything.” And they took care of everything. So we went ahead and we told the story to the court and we were successful in going ahead and getting these defaults set aside so that these people – these homeowners – could come in on an even ground, on an even playing field, and defend their cases like they just been served. And I’m telling you this because this is something that happens a lot. And if the bank tells you don’t respond to the lawsuit, the moral of the story is don’t believe it. Alright? Unless you get it in writing, don’t believe it. Because it’s a lot more work to come in afterwards and try and fix a problem, then to do it right from the outset. So, if you’ve been served with a lawsuit – if you’re going to be served with a lawsuit – call an attorney. File a response to the lawsuit. Be diligent and protect yourself. I deal with this all the time. If you have any questions, call me. I’m available. I’m ready to talk. I’d love to answer your questions. Thanks for watching. I’m Steve Kramer.
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