Summit County Enacts Rule Designed To Eliminate Sloppy Practices By Foreclosing Lenders & Their Attorneys

The Summit County, Ohio judiciary has recently adopted a local rule in mortgage foreclosure actions requiring the foreclosing lender's attorney to file a 14-point certification (known as a Certificate of Readiness) along with the lawsuit initiating the foreclosure action. Among the certifications that the lender's attorney is required to make is the following:

• The Plaintiff has in its custody and control the original note and mortgage, and said documents are available for inspection upon order of the Court.

In addition, the foreclosing lender's attorney no longer has 60 days to file with the court the required property title report (known as the Preliminary Judicial Report - serves as evidence of the state of the record title of the real property in question). The Preliminary Judicial Report is to be filed contemporaneously with the lawsuit and the attorney's 14-point Certificate of Readiness.

If the foregoing are not filed together when initiating a foreclosure action, the Summit County Clerk of the Courts has been ordered to reject the action for filing.

It will be interesting to see how lenders' counsel deal with the 14-point cerification when promissory notes have been lost, assignments of mortgages have gone unrecorded and that are dated on a date subsequent to the filing of the foreclosure action, and other well reported screw-ups that foreclosing lenders have heretofore been getting away with in foreclosure actions.

For more on the Summit County, Ohio court rule, effective June 1, 2008, together with the standard form Certificate of Readiness containing all 14 points that lenders' attorneys are now required to certify to the court when filing foreclosure actions, see Order - In re: Certificate of Readiness For Foreclosure Actions Filed In The Court of Common Pleas - General Division.

Many thanks to William A. Roper, Jr. for the heads-up on the new rule. missing mortgage foreclosure docs beta SloppyForeclosuresAlpha