Miami Judge Survives Call for Recusal in Foreclosure Suit Marred by Forgery Claims
Judges are bound by a strict code of ethics that says even the appearance of impropriety warrants removal, but allegations in this case didn’t pass the appellate panel’s scrutiny.
The Third District Court of Appeal declined to remove Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman from a foreclosure lawsuit Wednesday, finding a defendant’s allegations of bias weren’t enough to warrant removal.
Defendant Gabriela Bahad had alleged Hanzman gave preferential treatment to plaintiff debt collector Wilmington Savings Fund Society FSB and ignored her arguments that a $740,000 promissory note and mortgage for a house in Miami were not originals and contained forged signatures.
Her motion for disqualification accused the judge of being unfair and impartial, and conducted a bench trial while her attorney Alfonso Oviedo-Reyes of the American Immigration Bureau Inc. in Miami was “severely sick.”
“Judge Hanzman tossed aside without explaining why all the arguments about the lack of standing, lack of capacity to sue by the alleged plaintiff, and the fact that the payee of the promissory note in execution is not the person who signed the note or the mortgage,” the motion said.
But those claims didn’t hold under the appellate panel’s scrutiny.
Third DCA Chief Judge Kevin Emas and Judges Edwin Scales and Fleur Lobree denied the writ of prohibition in a sparsely worded per curiam opinion, which gave no explanation but pointed to prior cases denying disqualification over failure to allege any objectively reasonable fear of judicial bias.
Judges are bound by a strict code of ethics that says even the appearance of impropriety warrants removal.
Bahad is one of four defendants accused of defaulting on the mortgage. She alleges that what appears to be her ex-husband’s signature on the promissory note at issue is fake and claims she’s therefore not a debtor in the case.
Hanzman isn’t the first to come under fire in the litigation, as the defense has already removed Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jacqueline Hogan Scola over similar allegations of bias. According to that motion to disqualify, the defendant took issue with Scola’s remarks that the signature “looks the same to me” and that “this is not an evidentiary hearing.”
“The problem is that if that was not an evidentiary hearing, how was it that she concluded that the signature on the promissory note was good and that it was sufficient to allow the matter to proceed to a non-jury trial?” the motion asked.
Scola recused herself, but more than a year later Hanzman refused to do the same.
That was the right move, according to the Third DCA, which also affirmed the denial of Bahad’s objection to a foreclosure sale.
Oviedo-Reyes and plaintiffs attorney Christian Gendreau of Storey Law Group in Orlando did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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