LOS ANGELES (CN) - More than 300 homebuyers accuse California Attorney General Kamala Harris of "doing Bank of America's bidding" by seizing legal files from their attorney, Mitchell Stein, denying them the right to the legal counsel of their choice.
They say Harris "acted as the pawn of America's most powerful banks, rather than in the interest of California homeowners," to silence their attorney in lawsuits against mortgage lenders.
Similar complaints have been filed in Miami and New York. The allegations in this article come from the 54-page complaint in Los Angeles Federal Court.
The plaintiffs claim that Harris' raid on their attorney's law firm is an attempt to prevent homeowners from gaining ground in lawsuits against Bank of America and other banks which, they claim, "have committed various types of mortgage fraud and then stolen, or tried to steal, the homes of these plaintiffs in violation of state and federal laws."
The plaintiffs include more than 300 homeowners from several states who hired Mitchell J. Stein's law firm to represent them in lawsuits against Bank of America and 13 other financial institutions.
According to the complaint: "On Aug. 17, 2011, defendant Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General for defendant State of California, grossly violated plaintiffs' civil rights by seizing plaintiffs' legal files and denying plaintiffs the right to the legal counsel of their choice. Defendant Harris did this under the cover of secrecy without any public airing of the facts, without proper court approval, and without allowing either plaintiffs or their counsel or any court a chance to respond. Harris did so based on an inadequate investigation while citing demonstrably false accusations against plaintiff Mitchell J. Stein, an attorney. And Harris did so at the behest of Bank of America, whose attorneys had been deeply alarmed by the substantive progress that attorney Stein has achieved in plaintiffs' mass joinder case against the bank.
"Defendant Harris took this action while making the transparently false claim that she was protecting 'consumers.' Plaintiffs herein are among the consumers she purports to be protecting and they hereby vigorously reject Harris' jaded interpretation of 'protection.' Plaintiffs' desire is to continue to be represented by the LLP - and one of its partners, Mr. Stein - and for him to continue to unravel the worst systematic fraud committed by any financial institution in United States history.
"On Aug. 17, 2011, defendants intentionally violated the due process of all plaintiffs herein when they invaded the offices of the LLP in Agoura Hills and seized plaintiffs' client files and personal property not belonging to the LLP, claiming to have a court order that allowed them to do so, when such court order did not even name the LLP as a defendant in the underlying action that defendant Harris had filed in superior court."
Harris sued several law firms and attorneys on Aug. 15, accusing them of using deceptive marketing to induce thousands of homeowners across the country into joining mass joinder lawsuits against mortgage lenders.
Stein's clients claim: "Rather than protecting consumers, defendant Harris' actions primarily benefitted Bank of America, which has sought repeatedly to discredit attorney Stein ever since he filed in the original lawsuit against Bank of America in 2009, a lawsuit that the attorney general herself described as the 'granddaddy' of mass joinder bank cases.