Foreclosure mediation program ends, Judge has 300 cases in one day!

hmm, is "retired judge" the same as mediator??

Seminole judge's schedule: 300 foreclosure cases in 3 days

January 15, 2012|By Mary Shanklin, Orlando Sentinel

For three days starting Tuesday, Seminole County Chief Circuit Judge Alan Dickey has scheduled 300 foreclosure cases.

"If everybody shows up, I'll have about 30 seconds a case," said the judge, who expressed disappointment with the state Legislature's decision to end funding for retired judges who were helping deal with a growing backlog.

One day in early October, Dickey processed about 125 foreclosure cases an hour throughout the day, the judge's assistant said. Many of those, she added, were dismissed or continued.

From the summer of 2010 through this past summer, the state paid retired judges to tackle a backlog of hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases across Florida. During much of that time, it just so happened that banks cut back on foreclosure cases because of concerns about illegal documents.

But now — six months after the state ended its $6 million program — foreclosures are on the rise again. A report released last week by real-estate-research company RealtyTrac Inc. showed that the number of houses repossessed by banks last month in Metro Orlando was 1,094 — up 56 percent from November. And the court actions were on the rise for several months preceding that.