A new look at foreclosures and mediation

A new look at foreclosures and mediation

The Florida Supreme Court and Florida’s banking industry agree there’s a logjam of foreclosure cases clogging the state’s circuit courts, but they disagree on what to do about it.

The Supreme Court issued an order in December mandating each foreclosure case go through mediation before a judge can rule on the matter.

After a Supreme Court task force studied the state’s foreclosure backlog for several months — there were 296,000 foreclosure filings and 456,000 pending foreclosures in the last quarter of 2009, the court reported — it recommended to the state’s highest court that a formal process for mediation for each case be established. The Supreme Court ordered a mediation process Dec. 28, leaving each court circuit, including the Fourth circuit covering Clay, Duval and Nassau counties, to create its own system or adopt a pre-made model.

The court didn’t issue a deadline, but the circuit courts are eager to get their mediation processes in place soon to comply, Fourth Circuit Court Judge Frederick Tygart said.