When Columbus lawyer John Sherrod decided to represent a Westerville couple in their foreclosure battle, he didn't ask whether they had fallen behind on their mortgage. He already knew the answer - and it really didn't matter.
When Columbus lawyer John Sherrod decided to represent a Westerville couple in their foreclosure battle, he didn’t ask whether they had fallen behind on their mortgage.
He already knew the answer — and it really didn’t matter.
Instead, Sherrod pored over the foreclosure paperwork, looking for any sign that it had been mishandled.
He says he found plenty: a mortgage document signed by someone who had left the company long before; another signed by a Cincinnati man who erroneously identified himself as a vice president of a Virginia mortgage servicer; and evidence that the lender filed for foreclosure a day before it held the mortgage.
So goes the new legal battleground of foreclosure.
Since last fall, when Ohio’s Richard Cordray and other state attorneys general challenged banks’ shoddy foreclosure paperwork, defense lawyers have zeroed in on the paperwork, changing the nature of the battles.
“Cases are now being litigated differently,” said Columbus lawyer Adam Todd, who represents both banks and defendants in foreclosure cases.
“Because the loan was in default, there was always a presumption in favor of the bank. The news stories have flipped that presumption.”
Such attention, defense lawyers say, has given them more leverage in court.
“Since the ‘robo-signing’ issue became public, courts are more willing to scrutinize lenders,” said Kristin Rosan, a partner in the German Village firm of Madison & Rosan, which is representing about a dozen homeowners in foreclosure cases.
Despite some court rulings in their favor, though, defense lawyers aren’t running victory laps. A case dismissal based on botched paperwork remains rare, they say, even though half a dozen defense attorneys interviewed for this article can all point to cases in which they used the discovery of faulty paperwork to bring the bank to the negotiating table.
Two more-immediate effects of the heightened scrutiny of paperwork have resulted: More homeowners are hiring lawyers to help them through the process, and more foreclosure cases are languishing on court dockets.
About 5 percent of homeowners seek legal representation in foreclosure proceedings, defense attorneys estimate, but lawyers say the figure is rising as owners become bolder in fighting their cases and attorneys are more willing to take on the cases.
The increase in legal representation has helped slow the foreclosure process: Despite a 27 percent drop in Franklin County foreclosure filings this year, the dockets of county judges are thicker than ever.
“This has resulted, without question, in a buildup in my docket,” Common Pleas Judge John Bender said. “The upshot is I’ve got over 300 foreclosure cases pending.”
Common Pleas Judge Guy L. Reece has 390 cases pending — a fourth to a third more than a year ago, he estimated.
The judges aren’t complaining.
As Bender put it, “I would rather be sure that these proceedings go ahead correctly instead of having someone’s home taken from them.”
And Bender, Reece and Common Pleas Judge Kimberly Cocroft upped the ante themselves by requiring bank attorneys to verify that the documents they filed are accurate.
The move was designed to remedy one of the most-publicized robo-signing allegations: that bank representatives signed thousands of crucial mortgage documents without knowledge of their contents.
Defense attorneys now routinely look for evidence of such procedural problems, but such searches can take them down winding paths, as Sherrod’s Westerville case illustrates.
Sherrod, who has handled more than 150 foreclosure cases, thinks the case — Deutsche Bank vs. Robert Slayton — is a poster child for shoddy bank paperwork.
“All the elements that have been in the news — a fraudulent signature, a late assignment, lack of authority — it’s a perfect storm,” he said.
He acknowledges, though, that he hasn’t gotten far in his arguments.
Ten days ago, Sherrod took the unusual step of subpoenaing those who signed mortgage documents in an effort to prove that Deutsche Bank does not have the authority to file for foreclosure.
Julia Steelman, an attorney at the Cincinnati firm Lerner Sampson & Rothfuss who is handling the case for Deutsche Bank, referred questions to Teresa Miller, the law firm’s chief operating officer. Miller referred questions to Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, which services the loan. Adams, after taking questions about the case, did not get back to The Dispatch with answers.
Sherrod doesn’t dispute that Robert and Lisa Slayton fell behind on their mortgage.
According to court documents, the couple borrowed $424,000 from First Franklin Financial on July 24, 2006, to refinance the loan on a 3,000-square-foot home in Delaware County’s Highland Hills subdivision that they had bought two years earlier for $416,900.
In March 2008, they stopped paying on the mortgage, leaving about $417,000 unpaid. Six months later, Deutsche Bank, which had acquired the loan from First Financial, foreclosed on the property.
Robert Slayton, who was himself a loan officer for a subprime lender, said his income had dropped precipitously when the housing market collapsed in 2007. He lost his job, and after working for two other lenders, settled in with Priority Mortgage Corp. in Worthington in October 2009.
The new job allowed him to get back on his feet, but by that time, he had fallen far behind on his mortgage and other debts. He said he repeatedly sought to modify his loan but got nowhere with his overtures.
“Being in the business, I have some idea of what qualifies and what doesn’t,” Slayton said. “I tried this four, five, six times. ... Each time, it was six, seven, eight months before they responded.”
In February, days before their home was scheduled for sheriff’s auction, the couple successfully filed for bankruptcy protection, temporarily halting the foreclosure proceedings. They listed more than 50 creditors and debts of $681,233.
One of Slayton’s frustrations was trying to figure out who owned his loan, which is at the heart of Sherrod’s case. Slayton took out the loan with First Franklin, which transferred it to Deutsche Bank. Although the loan is being serviced by Wells Fargo, Slayton negotiated with America’s Servicing Co., a division of Wells Fargo.
Further complicating matters: The loan was registered to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a Virginia-based loan-processing firm commonly referred to as MERS that has figured prominently in the robo-signing scandal.
Sherrod argues that loan documents bearing the signature of First Franklin employee Keelin Johnson were signed long after she left the bank. In addition, he maintains that a man named Kevin Prieshoff assigned the mortgage from First Franklin to Deutsche as a vice president of MERS even though he worked for the law firm Lerner Sampson.
Finally, Sherrod argues, the loan was transferred to Deutsche on Sept. 11, 2008, a day after Deutsche filed its request for foreclosure.
Sherrod argues that the finances of the case don’t matter because the bank and its agents didn’t do their legal homework.
“All these things, such as whether or not he and his wife actually defaulted on this note, is a question we never even got to because the bank never went through the steps it had to to properly start this lawsuit,” he said.
Such arguments raise a philosophical question that won’t be resolved in the courtroom: Should the technicalities of the legal filings trump the financial facts of the case?
While not excusing legal lapses, bank representatives argue that focusing on paperwork details sidesteps the heart of the cases — that homeowners aren’t paying a debt they agreed to pay.
“Certainly, the lender doing the foreclosure is responsible for following proper procedures,” said Bob Niemi, executive director of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. “But that doesn’t mean a person should get their home for free.
“When you have someone who hasn’t made a payment in over two years, that doesn’t entitle them to a free house.”
The text passage is a news article discussing the legal challenges and complexities in foreclosure cases, particularly focusing on the scrutiny of paperwork and the impact on the legal process in Ohio. It does not contain any mathematical questions or calculations.
no_question
Given a text passage, determine:
    1. If it contains a mathematical question (including word problems or calculations)
    2. If an answer to that mathematical question is provided in the text

First, describe the content structure you found in 1-2 sentences.

Then provide your analysis in the following format:
TYPE: <one of the following values>
- NO_QUESTION
- SINGLE_QUESTION
- SINGLE_QUESTION_WITH_ANSWER
- MULTIPLE_QUESTIONS
- MULTIPLE_QUESTIONS_WITH_ANSWERS
system
When Columbus lawyer John Sherrod decided to represent a Westerville couple in their foreclosure battle, he didn't ask whether they had fallen behind on their mortgage. He already knew the answer - and it really didn't matter.
When Columbus lawyer John Sherrod decided to represent a Westerville couple in their foreclosure battle, he didn’t ask whether they had fallen behind on their mortgage.
He already knew the answer — and it really didn’t matter.
Instead, Sherrod pored over the foreclosure paperwork, looking for any sign that it had been mishandled.
He says he found plenty: a mortgage document signed by someone who had left the company long before; another signed by a Cincinnati man who erroneously identified himself as a vice president of a Virginia mortgage servicer; and evidence that the lender filed for foreclosure a day before it held the mortgage.
So goes the new legal battleground of foreclosure.
Since last fall, when Ohio’s Richard Cordray and other state attorneys general challenged banks’ shoddy foreclosure paperwork, defense lawyers have zeroed in on the paperwork, changing the nature of the battles.
“Cases are now being litigated differently,” said Columbus lawyer Adam Todd, who represents both banks and defendants in foreclosure cases.
“Because the loan was in default, there was always a presumption in favor of the bank. The news stories have flipped that presumption.”
Such attention, defense lawyers say, has given them more leverage in court.
“Since the ‘robo-signing’ issue became public, courts are more willing to scrutinize lenders,” said Kristin Rosan, a partner in the German Village firm of Madison & Rosan, which is representing about a dozen homeowners in foreclosure cases.
Despite some court rulings in their favor, though, defense lawyers aren’t running victory laps. A case dismissal based on botched paperwork remains rare, they say, even though half a dozen defense attorneys interviewed for this article can all point to cases in which they used the discovery of faulty paperwork to bring the bank to the negotiating table.
Two more-immediate effects of the heightened scrutiny of paperwork have resulted: More homeowners are hiring lawyers to help them through the process, and more foreclosure cases are languishing on court dockets.
About 5 percent of homeowners seek legal representation in foreclosure proceedings, defense attorneys estimate, but lawyers say the figure is rising as owners become bolder in fighting their cases and attorneys are more willing to take on the cases.
The increase in legal representation has helped slow the foreclosure process: Despite a 27 percent drop in Franklin County foreclosure filings this year, the dockets of county judges are thicker than ever.
“This has resulted, without question, in a buildup in my docket,” Common Pleas Judge John Bender said. “The upshot is I’ve got over 300 foreclosure cases pending.”
Common Pleas Judge Guy L. Reece has 390 cases pending — a fourth to a third more than a year ago, he estimated.
The judges aren’t complaining.
As Bender put it, “I would rather be sure that these proceedings go ahead correctly instead of having someone’s home taken from them.”
And Bender, Reece and Common Pleas Judge Kimberly Cocroft upped the ante themselves by requiring bank attorneys to verify that the documents they filed are accurate.
The move was designed to remedy one of the most-publicized robo-signing allegations: that bank representatives signed thousands of crucial mortgage documents without knowledge of their contents.
Defense attorneys now routinely look for evidence of such procedural problems, but such searches can take them down winding paths, as Sherrod’s Westerville case illustrates.
Sherrod, who has handled more than 150 foreclosure cases, thinks the case — Deutsche Bank vs. Robert Slayton — is a poster child for shoddy bank paperwork.
“All the elements that have been in the news — a fraudulent signature, a late assignment, lack of authority — it’s a perfect storm,” he said.
He acknowledges, though, that he hasn’t gotten far in his arguments.
Ten days ago, Sherrod took the unusual step of subpoenaing those who signed mortgage documents in an effort to prove that Deutsche Bank does not have the authority to file for foreclosure.
Julia Steelman, an attorney at the Cincinnati firm Lerner Sampson & Rothfuss who is handling the case for Deutsche Bank, referred questions to Teresa Miller, the law firm’s chief operating officer. Miller referred questions to Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, which services the loan. Adams, after taking questions about the case, did not get back to The Dispatch with answers.
Sherrod doesn’t dispute that Robert and Lisa Slayton fell behind on their mortgage.
According to court documents, the couple borrowed $424,000 from First Franklin Financial on July 24, 2006, to refinance the loan on a 3,000-square-foot home in Delaware County’s Highland Hills subdivision that they had bought two years earlier for $416,900.
In March 2008, they stopped paying on the mortgage, leaving about $417,000 unpaid. Six months later, Deutsche Bank, which had acquired the loan from First Financial, foreclosed on the property.
Robert Slayton, who was himself a loan officer for a subprime lender, said his income had dropped precipitously when the housing market collapsed in 2007. He lost his job, and after working for two other lenders, settled in with Priority Mortgage Corp. in Worthington in October 2009.
The new job allowed him to get back on his feet, but by that time, he had fallen far behind on his mortgage and other debts. He said he repeatedly sought to modify his loan but got nowhere with his overtures.
“Being in the business, I have some idea of what qualifies and what doesn’t,” Slayton said. “I tried this four, five, six times. ... Each time, it was six, seven, eight months before they responded.”
In February, days before their home was scheduled for sheriff’s auction, the couple successfully filed for bankruptcy protection, temporarily halting the foreclosure proceedings. They listed more than 50 creditors and debts of $681,233.
One of Slayton’s frustrations was trying to figure out who owned his loan, which is at the heart of Sherrod’s case. Slayton took out the loan with First Franklin, which transferred it to Deutsche Bank. Although the loan is being serviced by Wells Fargo, Slayton negotiated with America’s Servicing Co., a division of Wells Fargo.
Further complicating matters: The loan was registered to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a Virginia-based loan-processing firm commonly referred to as MERS that has figured prominently in the robo-signing scandal.
Sherrod argues that loan documents bearing the signature of First Franklin employee Keelin Johnson were signed long after she left the bank. In addition, he maintains that a man named Kevin Prieshoff assigned the mortgage from First Franklin to Deutsche as a vice president of MERS even though he worked for the law firm Lerner Sampson.
Finally, Sherrod argues, the loan was transferred to Deutsche on Sept. 11, 2008, a day after Deutsche filed its request for foreclosure.
Sherrod argues that the finances of the case don’t matter because the bank and its agents didn’t do their legal homework.
“All these things, such as whether or not he and his wife actually defaulted on this note, is a question we never even got to because the bank never went through the steps it had to to properly start this lawsuit,” he said.
Such arguments raise a philosophical question that won’t be resolved in the courtroom: Should the technicalities of the legal filings trump the financial facts of the case?
While not excusing legal lapses, bank representatives argue that focusing on paperwork details sidesteps the heart of the cases — that homeowners aren’t paying a debt they agreed to pay.
“Certainly, the lender doing the foreclosure is responsible for following proper procedures,” said Bob Niemi, executive director of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association. “But that doesn’t mean a person should get their home for free.
“When you have someone who hasn’t made a payment in over two years, that doesn’t entitle them to a free house.”
user
The text passage is a news article discussing the legal challenges and complexities in foreclosure cases, particularly focusing on the scrutiny of paperwork and the impact on the legal process in Ohio. It does not contain any mathematical questions or calculations.

TYPE: NO_QUESTION