Staff Writer
Senior judges will help tackle backlog of cases
Florida’s foreclosure crisis will receive some help beginning July 1.
Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince submitted a proposal to the Florida Legislature earlier this year requesting funding for a program to bring additional resources to reduce the backlog of residential foreclosure cases in Florida’s courts.
Quince requested $9.6 million be appropriated for the program that would use senior judges to hear noncommercial foreclosure cases in the state’s 20 judicial circuits.
The Legislature decided to approve $6 million for the courts and $3.6 million for the clerks to help with the backlog. The funding will come from courts’ and clerks’ trust funds. The court was given permission to dip into a trust fund that was developed from foreclosure filing fees.
As the program progresses, the Office of the State Courts Administrator (OSCA) will monitor the program to gauge its success.
“We’ve got a pretty big data initiative going with this also, so we can track how successful we are, what the issues are and if there are ways to improve it,” said Kris Slayden, senior court statistics consultant with OSCA.
“We estimated that we could dispose of 62 percent of our backlog cases through the program. That still leaves 38 percent, so we are thinking there may be a need for additional resources. The Trial Court Budget Commission said that they would consider it for a supplemental budget request for next December, but until we get data and see how it’s going, we’re not sure we are going to request it for next year.”
Locally, judges, clerks and staff are focused on the start of the special courts.
“We have a mortgage foreclosure crisis in Florida and this program has been developed to help ease that backlog,” said Senior Circuit Court Judge A.C. Soud, who has helped organize the program in the Fourth Circuit.
“Chief Judge (Donald) Moran and court administration staff have done a great job taking the lead on this issue. We are trying to make it the best program in the state.”
Soud will be joined by Senior Judges Aaron Bowden, Charles Mitchell and Michael Weatherby in the Duval County Court, which will operate four days a week. Senior Judge Frederic Buttner will preside over the Clay County Court three days a week. Senior Judge Bob Williams will preside over the Nassau County Court two days a week, with assistance from Duval County judges.
There are currently 14,324 open foreclosure cases in the Fourth Judicial Circuit.
“In Duval County, there are close to 2,500 foreclosure cases that no activity of record has occurred in over a year,” said Soud. “Some of those cases may have been resolved between the homeowner and the lender, we just haven’t been notified. We will look into those to find out. The oldest case goes back to 2004.”
In a separate program, The Jacksonville Bar Association has scheduled its first mediation of the Fourth Judicial Circuit’s Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program. The JBA was selected by the Court as the director of the program.
The goals of the program include providing the borrower with credit counseling to provide a better understanding of lending practices and to bring both the borrower and lender to the table in an effort to reach a settlement.
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