Even as Obama and Holder Refuse to Go After the Banksters, the Judges are Getting Cross

Well, about 99% of the population have wondered why no banksters have been criminally prosecuted, and now, judges are beginning to wonder as well:

Last week, for the first time since the financial crisis, the government faced off in court against a major bank over lending practices during the mortgage mania. Lawyers for the Justice Department contend that Countrywide Financial, a unit of Bank of America, misrepresented the quality of mortgages it sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giants, starting in 2007. Fannie and Freddie incurred gross losses of $850 million on the defective loans and net losses of $131 million, the government said.

Bank of America disagrees. Its lawyers say that Countrywide did not defraud Fannie or Freddie.

This case is undoubtedly big, but it is only one of many mortgage-related matters inching through the judicial system. And what is notable about some of the lower-profile matters is the tone and tack that federal judges are taking in their rulings. District court judges are not generally known as flamethrowers, but some seem to be losing patience with the banks.

For decades leading up to the foreclosure debacle, plaintiffs’ lawyers say, judges generally took the side of lenders when borrowers came to court complaining of problematic lending or predatory loan servicing. Many judges still do. But some are getting tough, perhaps having seen too many examples of dubious bank behavior.

“Maybe the judges are tired of the diet of baloney sandwiches the banks have been feeding them,” said April Charney, a foreclosure defense lawyer who for years represented troubled borrowers at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida. She is now in private practice.

Two recent rulings — one in New York involving Bank of America and one in Massachusetts involving Wells Fargo — serve as examples. In the Wells Fargo case, a ruling on Sept. 17 by Judge William G. Young of Federal District Court was especially stinging. In it, he required Wells Fargo to provide him with a corporate resolution signed by its president and a majority of its board stating that they stand behind the conduct of the bank’s lawyers in the case.

The case involved a borrower named Joseph Henning who fell behind on his mortgage, which he received from Wachovia, an entity later absorbed by Wells Fargo. In a suit filed against Wells Fargo in May 2009, Mr. Henning contended that the loan was predatory.

Judge Young agreed with the bank’s argument that federal laws pre-empted the state-law remedies Mr. Henning was seeking. But he did so reluctantly, calling it a win based “on a technicality.”

Then he chastised the bank. “The disconnect between Wells Fargo’s publicly advertised face and its actual litigation conduct here could not be more extreme,” the judge wrote. “A quick visit to Wells Fargo’s Web site confirms that it vigorously promotes itself as consumer-friendly,” he continued, “a far cry from the hard-nosed win-at-any-cost stance it has adopted here.”

If Wells Fargo does not supply the corporate resolution within 30 days of the ruling, the case will go to a jury trial, the judge said.

It is notable that there is no right to jury trial here, and Wells Fargo does not want to place their fate in the hands of ordinary people who are likely to understand how

Even if prosecutors are unwilling to hold the banksters to task, it appears that some judges are no longer willing do deal with the sh%$ that banksters are trying to peddle as Shinola.