The Florida Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Thursday in a lawsuit that could undo hundreds of thousands of foreclosures and open up U.S. banks to severe financial liabilities in the state where they face the bulk of their foreclosure-fraud litigation.
The court is deciding whether banks who used fraudulent documents to file foreclosure lawsuits can dismiss the cases and refile them later with different paperwork.
Of all the foreclosure filings in 26 states, sixty three percent, a total of 138,288, are concentrated in five states, according to RealtyTrac, an online forclosure marketplace. Of those, nearly half are in Florida. In Congressional testimony last year, Bank of America, the U.S.’s largest mortgage servicer, said that 70 percent of its foreclosure-related lawsuits were in Florida.
