Foreclosure crisis clogs up court system

The national court system is being inundated by record numbers of foreclosures, as clerks struggle to keep pace with fast-changing dockets where banks have canceled hundreds of hearings and judges are deciding if they should dismiss cases that rely on affidavits prepared by robo-signers, the Wall Street Journal reported. Even if the outcome of most cases is unlikely to change, the added scrutiny is causing massive delays, particularly in Florida, which had one of the most drastic real-estate boom-and-bust cycles in the country. There were more than 476,000 loans in foreclosure in Florida at the end of the second quarter of 2010, or about 14 percent of all the state’s home loans. Last year, the state legislature gave the courts $9.6 million to bring back retired judges to handle foreclosure cases. But judges who worked to resolve those problems aren’t convinced that they’ve seen the last of them. “It’s a constantly changing landscape,” said Judge Jennifer Bailey of the Dade County court. [WSJ]