Pasco judge warns attorneys about high foreclosure fees

Pasco County Circuit Judge Susan Gardner has agreed to let some attorneys "off the hook" - this time - for legal fees she says are inflated.

"But I'm not approving these fees to be added to the final judgment," Gardner said. "And I think attorneys now know that I'm watching, and I'm not tolerating unreasonable fees."

Gardner decided last month to take a closer look at her foreclosure cases after former employees of a large foreclosure firm testified to overbilling and forging documents.

The judge plastered files with adhesive notes detailing concerns over a mountain of fees to serve notice of foreclosure lawsuits to homeowners and to people who don't exist.

"Routinely, routinely, I'm seeing charges of $1,600, $1,800, $1,000, $800, any of those are ridiculous, and there had better be a good reason for it," Gardner said at the time.

These fees should typically be $45 to a couple hundred bucks, she said.

Some of the lawyers who submitted affidavits to the court saying the fees are "reasonable" often sign their names and bar numbers in an illegible scribble, court records show.

The judge ordered five lawyers to show why the fees were reasonable. Their explanations didn't please Gardner, but she said she decided to make this a warning.

"I was a little weak on holding someone's feet to the fire because I wasn't sure who to blame," Gardner said. "Everyone involved was following someone else's instructions."

In one case, an invoice shows both defendants in a case were served. But it also included charges for two unknown spouses and for two unknown tenants, even though none of those four people were found, according to court documents.

Three days later, the invoice shows, the process server attempted to serve the main defendants and unknown spouses again in Indiana.

The bill was $1,633.50, and Gardner says it should have been around $175.

The files in question involved two of the law firms that are under investigation by the Florida Attorney General's Office for submitting fabricated or misleading documents in foreclosure cases.

"My intent was to get their attention," she said. "And I think I did that."