Lender withdraws lawsuit against Cook Co. sheriff
Crashed e-mail servers and a lawsuit filed, then withdrawn, by a mortgage lender are part of a flurry of reactions to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's decision to stop foreclosure evictions.
Dart announced the suspension on Wednesday. The next day, more than 1,500 e-mails hit the sheriff's inbox, spokeswoman Penny Mateck said. The office fielded more than 700 phone calls.
"We heard from people all over the country; it crashed two e-mail servers," Mateck said. "The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive."
There was some criticism, too. The Illinois Bankers Association blasted the plan, and on Thursday, Accredited Home Lenders filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to force Dart to resume evicting people from foreclosed homes. On Friday, however, San Diego-based Accredited withdrew the suit, releasing a brief statement in which it said it also is suspending its eviction action against Shirley McFarland of Dolton from her foreclosed bungalow.
Accredited gave no explanation about why it was withdrawing the lawsuit a day after it was filed. A spokesman for the company declined to comment
Dart said during a news conference on Wednesday that he'd stop sending his deputies on court-ordered mortgage foreclosure evictions because many of the people forced from their homes were renters who faithfully paid their rent. Dart hopes the courts or the Legislature will establish rules that force mortgage holders to properly notify tenants when the building they live in has been foreclosed.
Toward that end, Dart met Thursday with Judge Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird, head of the chancery division of Cook County Circuit Court, to discuss the matter.
During the meeting, Dart suggested Kinnaird require banks to file an affidavit saying the homeowner and potential renters all have been given notice of the pending eviction before calling on deputies to act.
"I've just been trying to come at the entire eviction process from an entirely different way, to take a horrific, traumatic event and make it less so," Dart said after the meeting.
Dart described the meeting as positive, but said the judge did not make any decision.
As a symptom of the recent national mortgage crisis, the number of foreclosure cases filed in Cook County is expected to top 43,000 by the end of this year, authorities said. In 2006, fewer than 19,000 were filed.
Chief Judge Timothy Evans, in a statement issued Friday, said he will do everything in his power to make sure that eviction cases are properly adjudicated in Cook County.
"I want to assure persons caught in the cross hairs of the foreclosure process that, in Cook County Circuit Court, their rights will be protected, and justice will be done," Evans said.
• The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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