The special "rocket dockets" established in Florida last year to help slog through the backlog of residential foreclosure filings will be gone as of July 1, potentially paralyzing the already overloaded court system with an influx of cases and delays.
Already there are signs of disruptions. In one case in Palm Beach County, a court order was
The order said that, "because of the lack of funding by the Florida Legislature, judges are unavailable to preside over foreclosure trials beginning July 1, 2011."
A calendar call is when trials and other proceedings are scheduled.
Last July, the Florida Legislature allocated roughly $6 million to the state's trial courts to help speed up the foreclosure process by establishing special foreclosure-only courts that were overseen by retired judges.
Though that funding was meant to last for only a year, there remained a chance it could be renewed, Craig Waters, spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court, said Wednesday. "The idea was that one-year funding would help the courts clear most of the backlog," he said. "Obviously due to circumstances that nobody foresaw, that really didn't happen."
Waters added, "The Legislature was aware of the situation, but obviously the state is in fiscal straits so the program expires at the time it was originally intended to expire."
There was evidence that the special foreclosure courts had been working.
According to a study by the Office of the State Courts Administrator,
For foreclosures completed during the first quarter in Florida, it took an average of 619 days to work through the process, up from 470 days in the first quarter of last year, and nearly four times the average of 169 days it took in the first quarter of 2007, according to a recent report from RealtyTrac.
