LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of homeowners and former homeowners filed lawsuits in three states alleging that California Attorney General Kamala Harris
"acted as the pawn of America's most powerful banks" when she seized
their legal files and denied them the right to the legal counsel of
their choice.
Suits were filed Tuesday in federal courts in New York, Florida and California, according to Erikson M. Davis, an attorney involved in the actions. Davis said he expect homeowners to file against Harris in additional states.
The California lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said:
On August 17, 2011, Defendant Kamala D. Harris,
Attorney General for Defendant State of California, grossly violated
Plaintiffs' civil rights by seizing Plaintiff's legal files and denying
Plaintiffs the right to the legal counsel of their choice. Defendant
Harris did this under the cover of secrecy without any public airing of
the facts, without proper court approval, and without allowing either
Plaintiffs or their counsel or any court a chance to respond. Harris did
so based on an inadequate investigation while citing demonstrably false
accusations against Plaintiff Mitchell J. Stein, an attorney. And
Harris did so at the behest of Bank of America, whose attorneys had been
deeply alarmed by the substantive progress that attorney Stein has
achieved in Plaintiffs' mass joinder case against the bank.
Defendant Harris took this action while making the transparently
false claim that she was protecting "consumers." Plaintiffs herein are
among the consumers she purports to be protecting and they hereby
vigorously reject Harris' jaded interpretation of "protection."
Plaintiffs' desire is to continue to be represented by the LLP – and one
of its partners Mr. Stein – and for him to continue to unravel the
worst systematic fraud committed by any financial institution in United States history. . . .
Rather than protecting consumers, Defendant Harris' actions primarily
benefitted Bank of America, which has sought repeatedly to discredit
attorney Stein ever since he filed the original lawsuit against Bank of
America in 2009, a lawsuit that the attorney general herself described
as the "granddaddy" of mass joinder bank cases,
Defendants' lawsuit . . . claimed, among other things, that attorney
Stein had participated in illegal and unethical soliciting of clients
through mail advertising. On February 3, 2011, Bank of America lawyer Keith Klein
went into Superior Court with the very same allegations and was told
that the bank had not presented a legitimate complaint against attorney
Stein. Bank of America then took those same claims to Defendant Harris
and arranged for her to do their bidding, . . .
Defendant Harris disingenuously stated that "her office takes no
position as to the legal merits of any claims asserted in the mass
joinder lawsuits filed by defendants." Yet she clearly has taken a
position by seeking to remove the single most effective lawyer in
prosecuting those cases.
Also to the benefit of Bank of America, Harris has chosen to support
less able competitors to pursue the mass joinder claims against banks.
In fact, the primary evidence cited by Harris against attorney Mr. Stein
was provided by an affidavit from attorneys at a competitor law firm,
Brookstone Law Group. . . Further, Harris and other Defendants approved
and provided cover for a blatantly illegal marketing mailer . .
.[which] states unequivocally that anybody signing up with Brookstone
Law will receive $75,000 from a "class action settlement." The facts are that such a $75,000 "class action settlement" does not exist and is not close to existing. . . .
Plaintiffs were neither induced nor deceived in any fashion before
asking Mr. Stein to represent them. To the contrary, had Harris taken
the time to contact Stein's clients, she might have learned that many of
Mr. Stein's clients were referred not by advertising but by the offices
of California Senator Dianne Feinstein or the Department of Homeland Security. . . .
Mr. Stein was the first attorney to file a lawsuit against the Bank
of America – in the California Bank of America litigation -- laying out a
massive fraud against homeowners that has since been validated in
reports from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the
Government Accountability Office and the Federal Reserve and in a series
of lawsuits by AIG, attorneys general and – this week -- the Federal
Housing Finance Agency. All of these subsequent reports and lawsuits
were built on attorney Stein's foundation. . . .
The simple truth is this: Mitchell Stein
and his legal associates, who have built their case load not through
fraudulent mailings but through tens of thousands of hours of detective
work, are Bank of America's biggest nightmare. And while Defendant
Harris claims to be on the side of the California
homeowner, she is effectively trying to provide Bank of America, one of
the nation's worst corporate citizens in history who is now being sued
again by a very recent federal lawsuit, a "get out of jail free card" by
silencing attorney Stein. . . .
Defendant Harris has acted as the pawn of America's most powerful banks, rather than in the interests of California homeowners. Plaintiffs refuse to be made victims of Harris' poor judgment. . .
Since Defendants unlawfully shut down the LLP by duping a superior court into believing that it was only shutting down Mitchell Stein's
law practice, the LLP's clients have not been given any information
about their lawsuits from the attorney general or by Defendant
California State Bar, which has reportedly taken over their cases
nationwide. Many Plaintiffs are fearful that Defendant Harris has
shared their files with the very banks they are suing. Some have been
told they cannot get their personal legal files for at least three
years. By that time, if the evidence of fraud is correct, their homes
will be long gone, Bank of America will no longer exist and they will
have been denied their day in court.
COURTS:
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: Case 11CIV 6230.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida: Case 0:11-CV-61967-WJZ
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California: Case LACV-117303-CBM(MRWx)
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