"They Will Suffer The Consequences" Says South Carolina Chief Justice Of 'Corner-Cutting' Foreclosing Lenders Involved In Robosigner Scandal

In South Carolina, The State reports:

• Across courts in South Carolina, judges say they are halting more foreclosures — as many as one in four —because lawyers for banks have incomplete documents or missing paperwork. They also are starting to see the challenges to the authenticity of signatures on foreclosure documents that have made headlines in recent weeks. “Everything happening in the paper is happening across the state,” said James Spence, the Lexington County master-in-equity, the judge who oversees foreclosure cases in that county.

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• If enough cases get delayed for too long, S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal warned in a court order that she could allow judges to dismiss them. If more cases are delayed because of challenges to so-called robo-signing of foreclosure documents and other paperwork problems, “that’s just part of the process,” Toal said in an interview.

• “This just shows the financial foolishness of all this,” the chief justice said. “To the extent that they (lenders) might have cut corners, they will suffer the consequences.”[...] Just as legal documents need to be in order when people buy homes, they need to be in order when banks foreclose on them, S.C. Chief Justice Toal said. “The same rules apply to everybody,” she said.

For more, see Paperwork woes plague S.C. foreclosures (Judges delay proceedings because of problems with documents).