A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge has ordered the head of HSBC North America, Irene Dorner, to appear in court July 15 and explain why the America’s ninth-largest bank should not be penalized for submitting false documents in a foreclosure case, the New York Daily News reported.

In a decision issued Friday, Justice Arthur Schack dismissed the bank’s case against Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Ellen Tahrer as a “frivolous motion” and a “waste of judicial resources,” after it failed to prove that it even owned the $475,000 mortgage on the defendant’s home. Documents submitted were all signed by “robo-signers,” Schack said, and were “replete with false statements.”
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As the country sits awash in foreclosures, one Brooklyn judge, Arthur Schack, has made a habit of rejecting incomplete and inaccurate foreclosure papers — in the last two years, he’s rejected 46 of the 102 requests he’s received from bankers, lawyers and other foreclosure-seekers of their ilk. His controversial pattern has garnered both praise and criticism. Some judicial experts feel he’s a worthy opponent to a mortgage industry in dire need of reform; others, such as an unnamed HSBC banker, say his sympathies set “dangerous precedent.” Regardless, Schack contends that all of the foreclosure motions he denies are based on factual inaccuracies and not Robin Hood tendencies. “If you are going to take away someone’s house, everything should be legal and correct,” Schack said. “I’m a strange guy — I don’t want to put a family on the street unless it’s legitimate.”