Michelle M
Aug 02, 2016OUTCOME: House saved, Loan Modification, $630,000 principal reduction
Loan Lawyers was successful in saving our client's home and procuring a $630,000 mortgage principal reduction
Matisyahu H Abarbanel's Legal Cases (10)
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Consumer protection Lawyer at Fort Lauderdale, FL
Practice Areas: Consumer Protection, Foreclosure, Bankruptcy & Debt
Julie N
Nov 09, 2015OUTCOME: Trial won
Client, Julie N. (real name withheld for privacy), came to Loan Lawyers because she was served foreclosure papers alleging she was in default of her mortgage for failure to make monthly payments, which ... she adamantly denied. After a thorough review of her case, we determined that in fact the client should not be in foreclosure and the bank’s position that she was in default was incorrect. However, the bank was viciously coming after her to foreclose on the property. Before she received foreclosure papers and came to us, the client had been trying to speak to the bank about the matter for quite some time. Despite not getting answers after inquiring why her payments were going up and why her mortgage statements were on some occasions not reflecting that she had made them, she continued to pay the monthly amount the bank requested. Our client wrote explanations on the monthly payment stubs she mailed to the bank as to how they should be applied, and consistently requested an explanation for the errors, but all this was to no avail. Julie kept meticulous notes of the numerous representatives at the bank that she had spoken to trying to resolve this issue. This ongoing situation was stressful and overwhelming for her, as she had proof that she never missed a payment. In fact, it appeared that the bank was misapplying her payments and then wrongfully charging her late fees. Loan Lawyers defended her wrongful foreclosure, and when the bank refused to acknowledge their wrongdoing we prepared the case for trial. The case eventually went to trial in Palm Beach County, and it was an all day fight, for the bank refused to give in. The issue came down to whether or not our client was ever in default of any of her monthly payments, and the bank did everything they could to show that one payment was in default. We were successful in showing the Court that not only had our client paid every month on time, but on the months in question she had actually over paid in order to comply with the bank’s illegal practices. The court ultimately found in favor of Julie, and also noted in the court order that our client had not breached her agreement with the bank, and she had fully paid her mortgage payments in the precise amount required. Justice ultimately prevailed as a result of not giving up and fighting until the end.
Hector and Maria
Feb 04, 2015OUTCOME: $500,000 Settlement
Clients, Hector and Maria (real names withheld for privacy) came in to Loan Lawyers, tired, frustrated and dejected after a 10-month battle with a bank. They had been making their regular monthly mor ... tgage payments to their mortgage servicer, but unbeknownst to them, their loan was taken over by another servicer just 2 days after they had made a payment. In the chaos that ensued, their payment was lost. The new bank had considered the clients mortgage payment late and started a barrage of telephone calls and letters trying to collect on the “missing payment.” The clients patiently explained to each person that would listen that they had already made the payment, and that the bank had made an error, but nobody seemed to care. The clients even went to one of the bank’s local branches in person and spoke with the manager, following up by faxing and mailing written proof of the payment at least 5 times, still nothing seemed to help. The clients then went to their own bank and got a letter from the manager stating that date, time and transaction number as further proof that the payment was sent to the bank. Nevertheless, they were still completely ignored. Hector and Maria were on the verge of giving up before they turned to Loan Lawyers for help. Loan Lawyers reviewed their case and immediately filed a lawsuit against the bank for its illegal actions. The clients were not only thrilled that we took their case but couldn’t believe that we did the whole thing on a contingency fee basis and didn’t charge them anything upfront! As soon as the lawsuit was filed the bank hired a very expensive “Tall Building Law Firm” and came out swinging and refused to admit any wrongdoing. The highly contested matter turned into a nearly 4-year saga that involved over 20 court hearings, a dozen depositions requiring travel across the country at our own expense, hundreds of hours of work, and our review of over 300,000 documents. Through aggressive litigation Loan Lawyers discovered that the bank had misplaced many payments during the transition period and had received complaints from many other customers. Despite uncovering such evidence the bank refused to back down and continued to try and collect the “missing payment” as well as repeatedly reporting our clients as late to the credit reporting agencies. Once the case was set for a jury trial and the bank realized that we were not going to stop fighting for our clients’ rights until the end, we were able to force them into settlement negotiations, and secure a fantastic result for our clients. Not only did we get the bank to remove all the late fees and penalties, reapply the “missing payment” properly, and completely reinstate their credit score, but Loan Lawyers also obtained a cash settlement of nearly half a million dollars for Hector and Maria. Loan Lawyers was successful in returning our clients’ piece of mind, and holding the bank accountable for their wrongdoing. Loan Lawyers hard work, diligence, and perseverance paid off, and once again, we achieved justice for our clients.
John C.
Dec 02, 2014OUTCOME: $975,000 Settlement
John C. (real name withheld for privacy) came to Loan Lawyer with a problem regarding forced-place insurance on his property. John owned his house free and clear and needed some cash for his business. ... He applied and was approved for a home equity line of credit for a small fraction of the value of his home. Part of his deal with the bank was that he would not have to carry any additional insurance on the property than he already had. John made his monthly payments in full and on time and paid his property insurance premiums in full and on time for the next 8 years. After 8 years, the bank decided to force-place insurance on the property and raised his monthly payments over $200.00. John repeatedly went into his local branch where he had first obtained the loan and spoke with everyone he could, but to no avail. He also sent letter after letter to the bank trying to get to the bottom of the issue. The bank sent inspectors to his house to take photographs, and one inspector even told John’s neighbor that he was taking pictures because the property was in foreclosure, which was a lie. Loan Lawyers took John’s case on a contingency basis, so John wasn’t obligated to pay Loan Lawyers anything unless the prevailed. While discussing his force-placed insurance issue, Loan Lawyers looked into the totality of the debt issue to determine what other causes of action John may have available to him. After additional questioning, we found out that the bank had started calling him on his cell phone about his debt. John initially kept asking the bank to stop the calls and even wrote them about it. However, the calls kept coming. John had just been ignoring the calls and had mostly stopped using his cell phone because all of the calls were driving him crazy. Loan Lawyers immediately filed a lawsuit against the bank and alleged violations of various federal and state laws. One of the counts in the lawsuit was for violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C §227, et seq. (“TCPA”). The TCPA makes it illegal for a company to call someone’s cell phone using an automatic telephone dialing system without the person’s express consent. The penalties for each violation are between $500.00 and $1,500.00 per call. Due to the high value of the case, the bank fought tooth and nail and hired a top law firm to represent them. Loan Lawyers fought hard for our clients rights and during the heavy litigated case discovered that the bank had called the client over 1600 times in less than a year. Loan Lawyers was also able to prove that the client had repeatedly asked the bank to stop the barrage of calls. We were successful in settling John’s case for $975,000.00, which was a life-changer for our client. Had John gone to most other law firms, they would have addressed the insurance claim and ignored the phone calls because the client hadn’t mentioned them. Since Loan Lawyers takes a comprehensive and holistic approach to every case, we were able to obtain an incredible result for our client.
Frank G, Homeowner
May 13, 2014OUTCOME: Trial won, mortgage vacated
Frank G. (real name withheld for privacy) came to Loan Lawyers with a problem on his homestead property, and wanted help to get a loan modification. He had fallen behind on his mortgage payments and h ... ad been served foreclosure papers. We immediately got to work on defending his foreclosure and working on his loan modification. Frank also had a second property that he wanted us to help him with. The second property, a condo, was with another law firm, but Frank felt they were not making any progress and knowing that Loan Lawyers handles all aspects of debt issues, decided to move that case to our Firm as well. He was trying to do a short sale on the condo and he owed over $208,000 and the condo was only worth about $80,000. He was also now in foreclosure on this property as well. Going through his case on the condo, we discovered through a title search that both mortgages for the condo and his homestead property were encumbering the condo, thereby barring him for being able to sell it. Frank had bought both properties days apart with the same lender many years before, and unbeknownst to him, the condo had two liens one of which should have never been there. Frank had repeatedly tried to work with the bank before hiring us, but the bank would not work with him. While Loan Lawyers was defending both foreclosure cases, we diligently tried to work with the bank to rectify the issues on both properties; however, the bank refused to help our client and only wanted to foreclose. In 2014 the trial was set on the condo case. After a highly contested trial Loan Lawyers won the case. Not only did we successfully defeat the bank but we got a judgment in favor of our client.
Allen B.
Aug 03, 2013OUTCOME: $760,000 in liens removed
We first met Allen B. (real name withheld for privacy) in bankruptcy court where he was representing himself. He filed his bankruptcy in order to stop the scheduled foreclosure trial on his home. All ... en was surrounded by four creditor attorneys who were objecting to his proposed plan. Despite his best efforts, his case was eventually dismissed, which is often the case when consumers try to represent themselves. Allen called Loan Lawyers and asked if we could take a look at his foreclosure matter. Upon review of the bank’s complaint and supporting documents, we felt that the bank had not met the required threshold in successfully prosecuting its case. However, despite the bank’s objectionable supporting documents, the court granted judgment in the bank’s favor. Believing that the bank had not met its burden, we filed an appeal so that an appellate level court can review the matter which we felt the court had erroneously ruled upon. This time around we filed the bankruptcy on our client’s behalf in order to stop the foreclosure sale of his home. There were four secured creditors who claimed to have an interest in the home. The first mortgage had a claim of over one million dollars, the second mortgage had a claim of $150,000, there was a master homeowner’s association lien for $14,000, and a junior homeowner’s association lien for $12,000. Because the value of Allen’s home was less than the balance of his first mortgage, we were successful in stripping off his second mortgage and both homeowners’ association liens. Removing the second, third and forth liens on the property allowed us to focus on the first mortgage’s million dollar judgment lien. We immediately applied for a loan modification, and used our strong position on the appeal to force the bank to come to the negotiation table. Knowing that there was a good likelihood that we would prevail on appeal, we made it clear to the bank that if they were to offer a generous loan modification for our client, we would drop the appeal. After several months of negotiations, we were able to not only get our client a loan modification with very favorable terms, but we also got the bank to completely eliminate $584,117.61 from his mortgage balance.
Jean P
Aug 02, 2013OUTCOME: Driver's License reinstated
Client Jean P. (real name withheld for privacy) came to Loan Lawyers with an unusual circumstance. He was involved in a car accident and the insurance company sued him and was awarded a judgment in th ... e amount of $20,000.00. Jean could not pay the judgment and the insurance company petitioned the Florida Department of Highway and Motor Vehicles (DMV) to suspend his driver’s license. For more than a year, our client’s drivers’ license was suspended, and he was not able to get to and from work, causing him a tremendous hardship. As much as he needed to drive he simply couldn’t risk the chance of being caught while driving without a license which could have resulted in his arrest. Jean tried to get the insurance company to allow him to enter into an affordable payment plan payment for the money he owed them, but was unsuccessful. The insurance company used his suspended driver’s license as leverage and refused to enter into meaningful negotiations with him. But our client simply did not have the financial means to satisfy the insurance company’s judgment against him. Jean initially came to Loan Lawyers because several of his other creditors were perusing collections against him. Upon reviewing the nature of his suspended license, we advised him that we should be able to reinstate his license by filing a chapter 7 bankruptcy. Upon filing the bankruptcy, we proceeded with filing a motion to direct the DMV to reinstate our client’s license. We argued that the continuous suspension of his driver’s license constitutes a collection activity prohibited by the state in the recovery of claims by the motor vehicle accident judgment creditor. The court agreed with us and granted our motion. In addition to discharging our client’s debts, we were able to have his driver’s license reinstated. To say that Jean ecstatic to be able to drive again is an understatement!
Bob and Lucie T
Jan 10, 2012OUTCOME: Trial won, Judgment for our client, $4.5 Million dollar mortgage
A husband and wife, Bob and Lucie T. (real names withheld for privacy), came to Loan Lawyers for a foreclosure trial that was schedule for their home. Their home was worth several million dollars and ... the clients had about $1,000,000 personally invested in the home. The foreclosure case had been pending for approximately 5 years at that point. The clients were represented by another law firm, but did not feel confident that they had the requisite knowledge or experience to defeat the bank at trial. Their entire life savings was riding on this case and they wanted to make sure they found the best firm they could to fight for their rights. Unsatisfied with the defenses filed by the previous attorney, we amended the affirmative defenses, got copies of what we needed to defend the case, and geared up to take the case to trial. Having prepared thousands of foreclosure cases for trial, we put our experience to work and after countless hours of digging through thousands of pages of documents from the securitized trust that claimed to own the mortgage, we uncovered several problems that would prevent them from winning the foreclosure case. The big trial day came in Broward County, and the securitized trust brought one of their best witnesses to trial and sought a $4.5 million foreclosure judgment. As you can imagine from the size of the loan, the trust brought out the big guns and did everything they could to win the case. Despite their valiant efforts to wine the case, they simply were not good enough to defeat Loan Lawyers. In order to foreclose on a property, the plaintiff must establish that it had standing (i.e. the legal ability) to foreclose on the property on the day the initial foreclosure complaint was filed with the court. Loan Lawyers out maneuvered them and we were able to prevent the trust from proving their case in court. Ultimately the judge found that the securitized trust failed to establish that it had standing to foreclose on this house. The court entered judgment in favor of Loan Lawyers’ clients, thus denying the $4.5 million foreclosure for the trust, and resulting in Bob and Lucie getting to keep their home. Furthermore, as a result of winning our clients case at trial, Loan Lawyers is currently in the process of recovering all of their attorney fees from the trust, resulting in not only a tremendous success for our clients, but one that in the end didn’t cost them a penny to hire us to fight for their rights.
Bank of America vs. Julme, 17th Judicial Court Broward County, FL CACE09-21933-05
Sep 29, 2010OUTCOME: Final Judgment vacated and sale canceled
Uncovered fraudulent documents submitted to the court by Bank of America in an attempt to foreclose on our client's home.
Fred and Mary R
Jun 09, 2010OUTCOME: Trial won, mortgage invalidated
Clients Fred and Mary R. (real names withheld for privacy) came to Loan Lawyers regarding a house they inherited from their parents. The bank had just filed a foreclosure action against the property. ... This was not a typical foreclosure case however, it was a complex mix of foreclosure, probate, and property law. During the father’s lifetime, he signed his interest over to one of the children, but the mother did not. This child took a loan out on the house, but none of the other siblings signed the mortgage. Sometime thereafter, the mother died and then about two years later the father died. This situation created huge mess for the title of the property. Trial was set in Miami-Dade County on the foreclosure case. The siblings raised the homestead defense as provided for in the Florida Constitution. The bank argued that when the mother died, her interest in the property reverted to the father who already transferred his interest to one of the children, and since he is now the sole owner and signed the mortgage, there is no homestead defense. We successfully argued that the original transfer from the father to one of the children did not transfer all of the father’s interest, but only a life estate. This is a very obscure provision of the law. This means that the father only transferred the interest to the child while he was alive but that when he died, the interest reverted back to the father’s estate, in which all of this children share. Therefore, the mortgage signed by one child only is void. The court agreed with our argument and not only did not foreclose on the home, but even went a step further and invalidated the mortgage. So, what about the fact that one of the children signed a promissory note? Even though the mortgage is invalid and the bank cannot take the home, the debt should still be there. Loan Lawyers was even successful in arguing that the debt itself was not collectable because the bank did not present an original note to the court and did not meet its burden to re-establish the note under Florida law. This was a nice bonus for this client as well. Without hard work, novel research, and exemplary trial skills to pull it all together, these clients would have lost their home.
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