Click the link below to read the press release from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination about the “caucaisan only” land foreclosure auction sale advertised in the New Bedford Standard Times.
Twice.
Follow us on Twitter for more as this story develops (which oddly, took root at 3pm on a Friday afternoon of a long weekend that I think most people – including yours truly – really needs.)
Hat Tip to Fox 25.
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- Foreclosures Update: Florida & Ohio
- The Short Sale Option
- When Should You Start Thinking About Doing a Short Sale?
- Nasty Debt Collector, WaMu Responds, and BAPCPA
Tags: In the News
Given the recent surge in foreclosures, it was inevitable that something like this would happen. Racial and religious restrictive covenants have been unenforcable for a half century and more. Every so often, it seems, one is found in an old deed or a new deed copying old restrictions verbatim (one time in a deed of New Hampshire property to Chief Justice Rehnquist), the public is reminded Shelley v. Kraemer was decided in 1948, and life moves on.
This case should have been resolved by one phone call from MCAD to lender’s counsel suggesting the sale be postponed and readvertised so as to make clear (to non-lawyers) that these restrictions are unenforceable. Anything more (other than, perhaps, the press release), is overkill. There are better ways to be spend the Commonwealth’s money.
What this case may say about law practice is even more troubling. Presumably, a lawyer was responsible for copying, scanning, cutting and pasting the relevant deed language into the notice of sale. The lawyer who did this piece of work (or supervised the person who did) seems to have done so without reading the language in issue. What happened here is no argument for maintaining the current scope of real estate conveyancing work now viewed to be in the exclusive domain of the practice of law.
You hit the nail on the head – and I’ve been ruminating about this very issue this weekend. The reported statement from Harmon Law Offices included this: “It is industry practice to include in the notice of sale the exact legal description as set forth in the mortgage.” Yet, wasn’t it the lender (and it’s real estate attorney) who prepared the mortgage documents in the first place? The press reports are thus far silent as to how the language got there in the first place – and when.
I must respectfully disagree that there are better ways for the Commission to spend its money. Economic disincentives are the only way to not only prevent unlawful discrimination…if for no other reason, because they serve as a warning to others. While it might be unenforceable, someone at Harmon Law Offices – and ultimately it was a lawyer – supervised the presumably thoughtless cutting and pasting that led to this ad being published. I know I didn’t go to law school to copy and paste – or to borrow forms. I went to law school to think. Last I checked, that’s why my clients want – someone who thinks. Someone at Harmon wasn’t thinking.
Yet notwithstanding it being with in the exclusive domain of the practice of law, real estate practice (and many areas) over the years has devolved to a fast food operation where the key to success is measured not by the quality of what is done, but by quantity. When the amount of work becomes more important that the quality of the work, mistakes will be made.
-Bill