Florida Attorneys Expose How Improper Influence From the Financial Industry has Contributed to the Destruction of the Negotiability of Mortgage Promissory Notes

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In their Law Review Article published in Volume 6 of the William and Mary Business Law Review, Foreclosure Defense Attorneys Roy Oppenheim and Jacquelyn K. Trask-Rahn explore how the misuse of the term “negotiability” is encouraging predatory lending practices and rampant fraud in the financial real estate market.

As the nation begins to heal from the past few years of financial turmoil, foreclosure defense team Roy Oppenheim and Jacquelyn Trask-Rahn expose the effect the “negotiability” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac promissory notes had on the market crash in The Emperor’s New Clothes: How the Judicial System and the Housing Market Have Turned a Blind Eye to the Destruction of the Negotiability of Mortgage Promissory Notes.

The definition of “negotiability” is not for the banks to decide. The Emperor’s New Clothes article published in William & Mary Law Business Review Volume 6 traces the history of negotiability from its inception in the 1800’s to its current state of disarray. The article provides an in depth look at the ongoing disregard by the judicial system of the requirements of negotiability under Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code with regard to the purchase money mortgage market. The article admonishes the banking industry for inappropriately influencing the judiciary by asking the courts to find that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac standard promissory notes are negotiable instruments simply because the banking industry says so, rather than because of actual legal argument.

The article then calls on the judiciary “as theoretically the least political and most impartial branch of government, to find that such promissory notes are no longer negotiable instruments, and therefore must be transferred via assignment pursuant to Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code”, explaining that “such a construct would provide the transparency necessary to protect consumers and preserve defenses to predatory lending by the financial industry.” READ MORE