Rusty Law

American Homeland

The American Revolution didn’t reach Florida until 69 years after 1776.  When St. Augustine turns 450 in the year 2015, Florida will still have been under the Spanish flag longer than it’s flown the Stars and Stripes.  

Amelia Island is a little piece of land that went a long way as an instigator in Florida becoming part of the United States.  The French had landed there first, the English named it, and Spain held it longer than any of the European triad.  As the northern most coastal island of Florida, Amelia has had eight flags, a couple of which were interlopers who took the island for a short period and bloodlessly handed it over when a big sovereign showed up.  

In its diminishing New World presence, Spain got tired of defending Florida, especially this vulnerable island.  Furthermore, in 1817, 200 American troops set up camp on Amelia.  With the insistence of President John Quincy Adams, Spain relinquished Florida in 1821, and it became the 27th state in 1845, enjoying all the joys of citizenship and social stability therein.  

Today there are 138 foreclosure listings on Amelia Island, dwellers again seeking the stability of the United States.  

Nature of Economy

Hominids have been home-dwellers since the discovery of agriculture, with interior design popular since Lascaux in 15,000 B.C.  However, today’s foreclosure fervor threatens that existence. 

Extinction is a statistic-based probability, tracing the nearly fifty billion species through the fossil record written in stone to the discovery that 90% of those species are gone.  In the words of French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, they are especes perdues, meaning lost species. 

Some say a meteor killed the dinosaurs, some attribute climate change to each evolutionary upgrade in the chain of hominids, some give the correlation of human intrusion with the extinction of large mammals.  (Though Thomas Jefferson had hoped that Lewis and Clark would find wooly mammoths roaming the plains—what Thomas Jefferson wanted with a wooly mammoth is unclear.)  The foreclosure crisis could be our demise.  

Phosphorous leaves a footprint, especially in a habitation level of a soil.  Archaeologists test for elevated levels of phosphorous to pinpoint a living surface.  Certainly in the housing boom we’ve established more footprints than those at Mary Leakey’s Olduvai Gorge, but we’ve stopped walking.  

In the slash and burn practice of securitizing mortgages, using up sustainable markets, will the home-dweller tribe continue to exist?  Or will it become especes perdues?  

Firearms for Felons

There’s an eight year waiting period for a felon to own, posses, or use a firearm, even with the restoration of civil rights.  During that period, a convicted felon should be cautious about being in the presence of a firearm to avoid issues of constructive possession.  

Antique firearms are an exception to this rule.  Their definition is limited to weapons with slower firing mechanisms, such as a flintlock or matchlock, and ammunition that’s not readily available.  

Bow hunting is an acceptable option, following all applicable rules and restrictions, licensing, and permitting; but attending a hunting excursion with a rifle mounted in the pick-up truck may be constructive possession.  If you don’t know, don’t go.  

If you are seeking more information on the clemency process, go to the Florida Parole Commission website at http://fpc.state.fl.us.

Enlargment of Time

Time travel hasn’t quite been accomplished by lawyers, but we have figured out how to make time bigger.  A motion to enlarge time is a great first step in a foreclosure defense case.  

Once you are served foreclosure papers, you only have twenty days to respond.  Even the month of February is longer than that.  While you do own your home until it actually sells on the courthouse steps, you might not want to sit around biting your nails.  

A short sale does not stop foreclosure proceedings either.  Often a home owner will start a short sale, then receive foreclosure papers.  That’s just part of the process.  

However, an enlargement of time slows down the process, giving you some elbow room to meet with an attorney, get your paperwork in order, and examine your options.  

Minority Power

To be or not to be, that is the question of democracy, whether ‘tis nobler to think of sixty percent to pass a bill, or the mere forty-one percent needed to defeat it.  In a fifty-one percent majority, you need a lot more naysayers to defeat passage, and a smaller majority to put it through.  

Representative government took a major step in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, opening the democratic process to a minority.  Considered landmark legislation in the United States, for Florida, the first major civil rights legislation occurred in 1600, when Spain granted freedom to blacks, especially those escaping slavery in Georgia and the Carolinas.  

Spain’s motives were not purely altruistic, and the Spanish king updated the 1600 edict in 1693 to highlight the conditions of freedom to include conversion to Catholicism and enrollment in the militia.  Furthermore, Spanish Florida established the first free black community at Fort Mose in 1738 on their northern border, about two miles north of the Castillo de San Marcos.  What better line of first defense than a population who stand to lose their freedom if taken?  

Sometimes you need three lawyers just to tell you what the meaning of “is” is in legal matters, but with voting rights in the hands of all citizens, demographic minorities hold the same power as the traditional majorities.  

Foreclosure Defense

No one should go through foreclosure alone.  It is a long and complex process, none of which is easy, but you are better off if you know what to expect and have the opportunity to explore your options.  

The Orlando Sentinel estimates foreclosure eviction to take six to seven months; however, a defense against the foreclosure of your home takes no less than a year, and that’s only if you lose at every choice point in your case.  

A lot can happen in a year.  The best thing to do is to prepare.  Know what the process is.  Plan your next move instead of waiting for the courts to dictate your life.  Above all, don’t go it alone.  If you cannot afford an attorney, seek legal aid.  

Foreshore, Dude!

Beach sand is at the earliest rung of soil taxonomic evolution, heavy in quartz, and no distinct horizonation.  In other words, you’re not going to grow a wheat crop there.  Regardless of soil nutrient deprivation, this ground supports a hearty debate on public access.  

Beach access is not always as apparent as the sand, and it’s certainly not dirt cheap.  With homeowners purchasing beachfront property at premium prices, and public demand to access rising, a tide of controversy is hitting the high water mark.  

The public part of the beach is generally defined as the “foreshore region,” which is the area between the mean high and low water lines.  Of course rising sea level and beach erosion issues further complicate this definition.  A good rule of thumb is to plant your beach umbrella on the damp part of the sand, that way you know you’re in the right place for sure!  

Pay Attention!

The courtroom may be the place for the caged-bird to sing, but not for the juror to Twitter! 

Courtroom custom varies depending on the judges’ preferences; however, common courtesy is applicable on both sides of the bar. While conversation on a cell phone during dinner might put you in contempt of Emily Post, it is very not appropriate in court. 

Online communication caused a mistrial on an eight-week drug trial when nine jurors admitted to being online DURING court proceedings. Some judges don’t even allow telephonic appearance by attorneys! 

Facebook may be a fabulous social networking tool with valuable professional side-effects, but the courtroom is not the place to Twitter or email or do your online shopping. Furthermore, faceplanting via any means of Internet software can have detrimental side-effects for any professional. Doctors have suffered from disgruntled patients posting online ratings or raging outcries against them which go viral before they can be addressed. Then there are the terms of endearment, stepping on the copyright toes of intellectual property where original terms of service by many online forums claim the rights of what was posted. 

If you let your fingers to the talking, be considerate, and if you’re in the courtroom, tell your fingers to be quiet.

Skin In The Game

“Skin in the game” may be the latest idiom to describe the driving force of the mortgage crisis, probably a better term than that dirty verb:  “securitize.”  

While mortgage-backed securities have been around since the 1970’s, the term, “to securitize” is only about twenty-eight years old.  To securitize sounds more technical perhaps, and it has a very different meaning from being secure.  To securitize is to convert a loan into a security, thereby rendering the loan marketable and enabled to raise money.  

The problem with securitizing is that it passes the risk too far away from the banks, thus the banks lack “skin in the game.”  The banks are no longer risking their skin because it’s somebody else’s money.  Skin in the game is what makes the transaction accountable.  If the bank doesn’t have skin in the game, then it stands to reason they’d be more likely to make riskier loans.  

President Obama’s current proposal would leave 5% of risk with the banks.  This differs from Great Brittan’s system of covered bonds, which leaves 100% of banks’ skin in the game.  

It’s the American homeowners right now who have the most skin in the game.  To realize the American dream of home ownership is a wonderful thing, but not at the risk of foreclosure road rash.    

Pro Se

The run-on sentence seems like the hallmark of legal prose.  Think of the Preamble to the Constitution, not truly a run-on, but a four engine freight train of phrase after phrase after phrase, and with power and momentum as well.  

Attorneys have style, not just the robes and pinstripes, but the header at the top of legal documents is called the “style.”  The style contains the characters of the case (the plaintiff and defendant), the setting of the case (the county, division, and case number), and the plot of the document (what the document is trying to do).  The style is like a playbill, outlining the characters, scene setting, and what the document is trying to achieve.  

Throughout the legal document there are bolded areas, which highlight the important plot points. 

“Pro se” is not a misspelling of prose.  It is a Latin term meaning “for oneself,” and in a legal context, it means representing oneself.  While Pro se representation is on the rise in the United States, it may not be for you if you have trouble navigating legal jargon and long sentences.  Attorneys go to school for three years to learn what they’re talking about, and to become aware of strategies available.