In September, Judge Bruce Levin reduced the fees he thought fair to pay attorneys for the court in foreclosure cases in New Haven. In December, after only three months on the job, he has been transferred to preside instead over criminal court cases in Bridgeport.
Levin doesn’t see a connection. Rather, he believes his own personal financial investments are to blame.
Meanwhile, Levin’s successor plans to allow lawyers to collect $175 an hour again for handling foreclosures.
The state’s not saying why Levin has been reassigned. But in a phone interview, Levin said he thinks the move made sense — because he had to disqualify himself from too many New Haven foreclosure cases.
Levin said he owns some stock in companies like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase. When they appeared before him — and they did often, usually as plaintiffs in foreclosure actions — he had to recuse himself.
“If you own even a single share, you need to recuse yourself,’ he said. “I researched the law myself on the matter. If you have, let’s say, mutual funds in which Wells Fargo is a part, that’s not a problem. But even one share and you must disqualify yourself.”
Levin said he handled a good number of cases during his three-month tenure in housing court in New Haven. Deutsche Bank is the single largest foreclosing party in town these days. Levin said he had no problem dealing with Deutsche as he held no stock in the company.
But then the disqualifications were mounting in other cases. Sometimes they constituted half the docket.
After a few months presiding he received a letter from the court system’s chief administrator informing that he was transferred to Bridgeport for administrative reasons. No other explanation was given.
“That’s the way they do things,” said Levin. “But it was pretty clear to me that the number of disqualifications was the issue.
“I would have transferred myself. I pretty much had my bags packed.”
Several lawyers, who preferred not to be identified, said there was a lot of grumbling about the fee slash. Levin had reduced the hourly rate of the committee working for the court from $175 an hour to $105.
According to the spokeswoman for the State Judicial Branch in Hartford, Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, Judge Levin was reassigned by the court administrator simply for reasons of administrative needs across the system.
Stearley-Hebert said that the chief court administrator, Judge Barbara Quinn, makes such personnel and management decisions in consultation with Judge Patrick Carroll. She said he had not seen the article in the Independent on Judge Levin’s policy on lowering lawyers’ fees. “He said that operational needs of the court alone dictate deployment of the judges.”
Levin he will stick to his guns on fees if he receives another housing/foreclosure assignment. “You don’t have to be Brandeis to do a foreclosure, and I didn’t notice people dropping off the list to be a committee either. To the contrary, people were asking me to get on the list. The point is I believed then and I believe now what I was doing was good for the people of the State of Connecticut.”
He said he had some other plans in the works for New Haven housing court but no time to implement them. “I had just finished drafting a letter to major holders of the mortgages inviting them to come to us to use our mediators to see if we could put some people back in their houses and cash flow in their pockets. That letter was about to fly out, when I flew out instead.”
Levin’s successor in New Haven is Judge James Abrams. He had been previously assigned to the New London judicial district, where he presided over housing matters.
In a brief telephone conversation Thursday, Judge Abrams said that he has decided to return the attorney’s fees to $175.
“I simply think,” he said, “that it’s been this way for a long time. I want to respect the culture that has existed for quite a period of time.”
He said that in his pre-judge days he had functioned as a committee in Meriden and the $175 rate had prevailed there and, he thinks, it’s pretty much the same throughout the state.
On the matter of whether his ownership of bank stocks might expose him to recusing himself as Judge Levin was compelled to do, he said. “I have two kids in college! Believe me, I don’t own any bank stocks.”
Previous Independent coverage of New Haven’s foreclosure crisis:
• A Last Pre-Foreclosure Look At A Lifetime Past
• New Yorker Snags Foreclosed-Upon Gem
• Foreclosure Dream Goes Sour
• Judge Slashes Foreclosure Bounty
‚Ä¢ Tax Break Saves Woman’s House
‚Ä¢ Bank Replaces “Gunshot Alley” Landlord
‚Ä¢ Foreclosure Bill OK’d
• Singh Seeks Home For A Song
‚Ä¢ Foreclosure’s Neighbor Worries More About Speeding
‚Ä¢ Networking Replaces Foreclosure at Christy’s
‚Ä¢ Foreclosure Bargain — & Renewal — Jeopardized
• Bank Outbids Akbar; Family May Keep Home
‚Ä¢ “So Don’t Worry About Pablo”
• Bankruptcy Postpones Foreclosure
• Next-Door Foreclosures, 53 Years Apart
• They Met On Foreclosure Way
• Little Garage Draws Big Bids
• A 2nd Chance on Lewis Street
‚Ä¢ Foreclosure Attracts New Breed of “Specialist”
‚Ä¢ In Foreclosures, Judge’s Hands Tied
• Home Saved From Foreclosure. Cycle, Too
• A House For Precious?
• Deutsche Bank Grabs Dixwell Condo
• Reluctant Bidder Snags F. Haven Bargain
‚Ä¢ Well, There’s Always Powerball
• Neighbors Retrieve Home From Bank
• Somebody Has Plans For Bassett Street
• Foreclosed, the Khennavongs Leave the Santanas
• Foreclosure Steal May Be Too Good
• 2nd Foreclosure in 3 Months Dims Bright St.
‚Ä¢ After Foreclosure, W’ville Owner Still Hopes To Sell
‚Ä¢ He’s Not Buying, Yet
• Quiet Foreclosure on Porter Street
• 3 Minutes Too Late
• Historic Gambardella Property Foreclosed
•2 Homes Lost, 1 Gained
‚Ä¢ “Everybody’s Got To Eat”
• More Foreclosures, More Signs
‚Ä¢ Foreclosure Sale Benefits Archie Moore’s
• Rescue Squad Swings Into Action
• A Bidder Shows Up
‚Ä¢ Bank Beats Tanya’s Bid
• Westville Auction Draws A Crowd
• DeStefano: Foreclosure Plan Ready
• Can They Help?
‚Ä¢ “We Should Over-Regulate These Bastards”
• Rosa Hears of Rescues
• WPCA Grilled on Foreclosures
‚Ä¢ WPCA’s Targets Struggle To Dig Out
• Sue The Subprimers?
• WPCA Hearing Delayed
‚Ä¢ Megna’s “Blood Boils” at WPCA Tactics
• Goldfield Wants WPCA Answers
• 2 Days, 8 Foreclosure Suits
• WPCA Goes On Foreclosure Binge
• A Guru Weighs In
• WPCA Targets Church
• Subprime Mess Targeted
‚Ä¢ Renters Caught In Foreclosure King’s Fall
‚Ä¢ She’s One Of 1,150 In The Foreclosure Mill
‚Ä¢ Foreclosures Threaten Perrotti’s Empire
‚Ä¢“I’m Not Going To Lay Down And Let Them Take My House”
‚Ä¢ Struggling Couple Sues Over “Scam”
To learn about the ROOF Project, a community-wide effort to help New Haveners navigate the foreclosure crisis, click here.
The following links are to various materials and brochures designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
How to prepare a complaint to the Department of Banking; Department of Banking Online Assistance Form; Connecticut Department of Banking, Avoiding Foreclosure; FDIC Consumer News; Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut, Inc; Connecticut Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service.
For lawyer referral services in New Haven, call 562-5750 or visit this website. For the Department of Social Services (DSS) Eviction Foreclosure Prevention Program (EFPP), call 211 to see which community-based organization in the state serves your town.
Click here for information on foreclosure prevention efforts from Empower New Haven.