Sunday, March 14, 2010

FEDERAL STATUTES ENTITLE PRIVATE CITIZENS AN AWARD OF ATTORNEYS FEES IN A CIVIL ACTION SHOULD THEY PREVAIL

 Thank You So Much For Your Donations! May God Bless Every Hurting Homeowner.   Thank You Lord for the Turning Tide.  May Every Homeowner Who Reads These Words Be Blessed with a Quieted Title.  God's Will Be Done Always.  Keep the Prayers Up...and PLEASE Let Us Know How Your Are!!  We worry about your homes as if they were our own.  Every homeowner win against WELLS FARGO brings us closer to a  $1,430,000,000 goal.   WELLS FARGO's loss of $1.43B will help us feel as if we have avenged the $143,000 in our home's equity they stole from us.   We want to HELP HOMEOWNERS LOCK WELLS FARGO OUT OF ACCESSING ANY SQUARE INCH OF THEIR HOMES.  

In 2010 Quiet the Titles on $1.43B of purportedly WELLS FARGO homes...

One classs action...
A Recent California Ruling
for an
Award
for
Private Attorney General(a Pro Se Litigant)!!!!

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Friday, Novemberer 21, 2008
Supreme Court Rules:
Attempt to Settle Not Required for ‘Private Attorney General’ Fees

 By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer

 A prevailing party seeking an award of attorney fees under the “private attorney general” statute, Code of Civil Procedure Sec. 1021.5, need not necessarily show it made adequate efforts to resolve the dispute short of litigation, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The justices unanimously upheld an award of more than $1.25 million to attorneys for Cristina Vasquez, vice president of the textile workers’ union UNITE.

Vasquez prevailed in an action accusing the state of violating Proposition 139, which requires that prison inmates working for joint ventures with private industry be paid prevailing wages, after officials agreed to a stipulated injunction establishing procedures designed to ensure compliance.

Vasquez’s taxpayer claim arose out of allegations that the state and a private company called CMT Blues violated the Prison Inmate Labor Initiative of 1990 because a joint venture to manufacture clothing at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego did not pay wages comparable to those paid in the private sector. Inmates allegedly were also instructed to remove and replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with those that read “Made in the USA.”
  
Class Action
WELLS FARGO VICTIMS ARE UNITED
YOU'VE BEEN PATIENT
IT'S TIME TO FILE
THE TIDE IS TURNING
THE INJUNCTIONS ARE PREPARED
THE MOTIONS TO SHOW CAUSE ARE READY TO SERVE
THE SUMMONS ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE PROCESS SERVERS
VICTIMS ARE STILL COMING IN, BUT I THINK IT'S TIME
START PRAYING,
YOU WILL BE COMPENSATED, VINDICATED, RECOMPENSED
RESTORED
TO A POSITION
BETTER THAN YOU COULD HAVE EVER HOPED FOR, IMAGINED, OR DREAMED.

The inmates’ claims were certified as a class action and tried without a jury, resulting in a verdict of more than $840,000. Vasquez’s taxpayer claim was tried later, but was settled mid-trial, with the amount of attorney fees, if any, left to San Diego Superior Court Judge William Pate’s discretion.
Pate concluded that Vasquez’s attorneys had devoted about $967,000 worth of time to her claim and applied a multiplier of 1.3 in reaching the final amount.

The state appealed the award, arguing among other things that Vasquez was not entitled to attorney fees because she had not engaged in a reasonable effort to settle prior to filing suit. The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed, distinguishing Graham v. DaimlerChrysler Corp. (2004) 34 Cal.4th 553, which imposed such a requirement.

The Court of Appeal noted that Graham involved an award of fees under the “catalyst” theory, which holds that a party that did not prevail in litigation may nonetheless be awarded fees under Sec. 1021.5 if the suit caused the defendant to change its behavior in a way that benefited the public or a large class of persons.

Not Catalyst Case
Vasquez’s suit was not a catalyst case, since it resulted in a stipulated injunction, and no policy reason supports extending the requirement of a reasonable settlement effort to non-catalyst cases, the Court of Appeal reasoned.

Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, writing yesterday for the Supreme Court, said that a trial court, in exercising its discretion over whether to award fees under Sec. 1021.5, must consider “all circumstances bearing on the question whether private enforcement was necessary, including whether the party seeking fees attempted to resolve the matter before resorting to litigation,” but that there is no categorical requirement of a reasonable settlement effort in non-catalyst case.

Nothing in Graham or subsequent California cases supports imposing such a requirement, Werdegar wrote, nor is there any reason to extend the rule.

“In Graham, we simply identified a set of cases at one end of the equitable spectrum that appeared to justify a bright-line rule because, in those cases, no court-ordered change in the parties’ legal relationship exists to show that the public benefit supposedly meriting fees was caused by the plaintiff’s litigation rather than by the defendant’s voluntary action,” the justice wrote.

Werdegar went on to reject the argument that the suit should be treated as a catalyst case since it ended in settlement. “We have...never adopted the formula the state offers as the definition of a catalyst case,” the justice said.

The case was argued in the Supreme Court by San Diego attorney Martin Buchanan for the state and by Richard Berke of Santa Monica for the plaintiff. Amici included the Los Angeles County Bar Association, The Impact Fund, and the Pacific Legal Foundation for the plaintiff and the California State Association of Counties and League of California Cities for the state.
HOMEOWNERS IN CALIFORNIA
FIGHTBACK! 
REPRESENT YOURSELF, ACT AS YOUR OWN
"PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERAL"
Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5Entitles non-attorney's to plead for attorney's fees!
http://www.calattorneysfees.com/cases_private_attorney_general_ccp_10215/

The case is Vasquez v. State of California, 08 S.O.S. 6283.
Copyright 2008, Metropolitan News Company

Permalink
November 20, 2008

California Supreme Court Rejects Categorical Rule That Plaintiff Must Have Engaged In Reasonable Settlement Efforts In Seeking CCP Section 1021.5 Fees Under Noncatalyst Cases

Unanimous Court in Vasquez v. State of California Adopts A More Flexible Rule and Equitable Consideration of This Factor in the Noncatalyst 1021.5 Context.

In our category "Cases Under Review," we noted that the California Supreme Court had accepted review of Vasquez v. State of California, which presented the issue of whether plaintiff, in order to recover attorney's fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5 (the private attorney general statute) first had to attempt to settle the matter short of litigation in a noncatalyst case. On November 20, 2008, the Court came down with its decision in Case No. S143710, squarely answering the question "no."

Earlier, in Graham v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 34 Cal.4th 553, 560 (2004), the California Supreme Court had held that this reasonable settlement effort was a prerequisite for a section 1021.5 fee award in a "catalyst case". In Graham, the Supreme Court held the “catalyst theory” permits a court to award attorney fees under section 1021.5 “even when litigation does not result in a judicial resolution if the defendant changes its behavior substantially because of, and and in the manner sought by, the litigation.” However, in Vasquez, the Supreme Court found nothing in either the legislative history of or policies underlying section 1021.5 to mandate an extension of the reasonable settlement effort requirement in the context of noncatalyst cases. (In Vasquez, plaintiff obtained a stipulated injunction--which is not treated as a catalyst situation.)


The Court rejected application of a categorical rule in noncatalyst cases. Instead, the lower courts have equitable discretion to weight the reasonable settlement effort factor when determining that "the necessity and financial burden of private enforcement are such as to make the award appropriate" under one of the section 1021.5 prongs. Justice Werdegar, writing on behalf of a 7-0 court, stated:
"The language of section 1021.5 is sufficiently flexible to permit courts to consider these and all other relevant circumstances in determining whether private enforcement was sufficiently necessary to justify awarding fees." (Slip Opn, at p. 8.)

Vasquez also mentioned other situations, noting that reasonable settlement efforts must be demonstrated as a fee prerequisite in FEHA catalyst cases, while no such requirement need be met in ADA cases. It similarly has a nice discussion of the distinctions between "catalyst" and "noncatalyst" cases.

YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN ATTORNEY, AND WIN ATTORNEY'S FEES! 
YES, THE AMOUNT THE OTHER SIDE WOULD HAVE WON, A REASONABLE AMOUNT.
 HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO LET GO, MOVE ON? YES? GOD BLESS YOU.
NO, LET GOD HELP YOU. PRAY. LISTEN. WHAT DOES HE SAY?

COURT OF THE U.S. – RULES Part VII. Practice and Procedure Rule 39. Proceedings In Forma Pauperis. The courts provide in propria persona parties wide latitude when construing their pleadings and papers. When interpreting pro se papers, the Court should use common sense to determine what relief the party desires. Defendant has the right to submit in propria persona briefs on appeal, even though they may be in artfully drawn but the court can reasonably read and understand them. See, Vega v. Johnson, 149 F.3d 354 (5th Cir.1998).Acting Private Attorney General: PJ Stewart, under 42 U.S.C. § 2000a–3, 33 U.S.C. 1365, 18 USC § 3283, 42U.S.C § 1983, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, The term private attorney general refers private citizens who in any civil or criminal court proceeding, is acting on behalf of that person’s rights and equal protection under the law. The private attorney general is entitled to recover attorney’s fees if he or she prevails.

ARMING
ATTORNEYS
and PRIVATE ATTORNEY GENERALS
WITH THE AMMO TO WIN!
Posted on March 14, 2010
by Neil Garfield

Winning Strategies Require Attorneys Have: 
  1. Leverage of a credible threat 
  2. Issues of fact that shift or heighten the burden of proof to the foreclosing party
  3. Evidence vs Allegations
  4. Understanding of your Opponent – Right hand isn’t often talking to the Left hand
  5. Guns with only one bullet (e.g. produce the note) are for Russian Roulette
  6. You ned a full magazine in case you misfire a couple rounds
  7. KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid…so the Judge can Understand
  8.  Difference between a “Loan Audit” and Mortgage Analysis
  9. Aessing Lender Compliance at Origination
  10. It’s all about Disclosure Requirements
  11. How to Analyze and Identify Material TILA RESPA HOEPA Violations Yourself
  12. Rescission: What it is and what it isn’t
  13. Right ways and Wrong ways to apply TILA and other Loan Compliance Findings
  14. Evidence or Characteristics of “Predatory” Lending
  15. Using the Qualified Written Request (QWR)
  16. Requirement to Disclose the True Owner
  17. What Forensic Mortgage Analysis uncovers that the “canned TILA audit” doesn’t
  18. Securitization for Dummies
  19. Public Domain Evidence – SEC filings and What They Can Reveal
  20. Important Questions SEC Filings Don’t Reveal That Should be Answered
  21. What a periodic distribution report to the Certificate holders can determine
Wells Fargo to Repurchase
$1.4 Billion of Securities:
WHAT THAT MEANS TO YOU

 Posted on November 19, 2009
by Neil Garfield

You can use this information by establishing “probable cause” in the mind of the Judge or jury right off the bat — we know they lied to investors, are we now supposed to believe they told the truth to the homeowners?

This is the kind of news article buried deep into a newspaper or far down on the list of on-line articles that leaves everyone — homeowners, attorneys, judges, legislators and regulators — in the dark. Wells Fargo is settling one of many claims that it lied to investors about the mortgage backed securities they bought which funded your loan and which filled the pockets of Wall Street “innovators” for years. It doesn’t actually tell us what they lied about — you’ll need to look up the complaint (which I hope someone will do and send to me in pdf format) but it does say that those investors are now paid off in full and that Wells Fargo is buying back what they sold.

Now Wells Fargo will attempt to use that purchase as proof that it is the “INVESTOR” ignoring the ill-gotten gains that preceded it, and attempting to establish itself as the holder in due course, long after the securities were in default, long after the underlying asset mortgages were in default, and long after Wells Fargo received payoffs in credit default swaps that easily cover what they paid the investors and then some.

The point here is that the shell game continues. The regulators are not sophisticated or motivated enough to actually express this for what it is. Even the media gets totally confused. Instead of saying that many loans were paid off or sold back to Wells Fargo for $1.4 billion, it says something about “auction rate securities” which means nothing to practically everyone. What this REALLY means is that you have a defendant (actually several of them — see below) who has actually and demonstrably committed fraud as part of the securitization scheme that funded the financial loan products sold to homeowners — except that so far everyone is concentrating on the fraud on investors. Why is that? The little guy who was lied to, abused and shaken by this ordeal doesn’t matter. It’s just the people with the money that count. You can use this information by establishing “probable cause” in the mind of the Judge or jury right off the bat — we know they lied to investors, are we now supposed to believe they told the truth to the homeowners?

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