In litigation between Benworth Capital Partners, as plaintiff, and Gilda Industries, Inc. and Velma Blazquez, as defendants, defense counsel Zachary Hyman of Millennial Law recently filed an emergency motion to enforce sale order and request for sanctions and other relief.
The defendants alleged in the motion that Benworth engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to prevent the court from addressing the predatory nature of the plaintiff’s loans.
“After forcing the Assignee, Philip Von Kahle, to cancel the sale of the primary and most valuable asset of Estrella Enterprises, Benworth Capital Partners insisted on aggressively proceeding with the foreclosure of real property where Velma Blazquez, a 77-year-old woman who recently suffered a heart attack, resides,” the motion stated.
Because Blazquez’s health is at risk, the defense asked the court to postpone the sale of her home.
“Urgent update: Velma Blazquez was just admitted to the hospital with significant internal bleeding. Please reschedule the sale. You don’t want this lady’s blood on your hands,” Hyman wrote to the plaintiff.
The plaintiff’s counsel, Daniel Mendez of Mendez & Mendez, responded, “Blood on our hands? What is this guy talking about. [sic] So our foreclosure caused internal bleeding. Got it 😂.”
“This correspondence is exemplary of Benworth’s bad faith and scorched-earth efforts to use predatory lending to take advantage of an elderly woman, while laughing about the impact their conduct has on its victims. As of the filing of this motion, Blazquez is currently hospitalized,” the complaint stated.
Hyman emphasized the importance of the motion.
“There’s a concerted effort to prevent the court from hearing about the attempts to charge an illegal interest rate and take advantage of an elderly, hospitalized woman,” Hyman alleged.
$10.35 Million
Mendez stated that his email was not intended to mock anyone but to express confusion about the correlation between the two events. “How does a foreclosure cause internal bleeding? They have nothing to do with each other, and it’s no laughing or mocking matter that she’s in the hospital,” he observed.
Furthermore, Mendez admitted that the email was mistakenly sent to the opposing party. “I was supposed to send it to my client, not to them. After realizing the mistake, I told him, ‘This email was not intended for you.’ Despite that, he still used it in a pleading. I said, ‘This is an attorney-client communication,’ but he didn’t care and used it anyway, which is wrong,” Mendez said.
Bernardo Navarro, the founder and president of Benworth Capital, a family-owned company representing over 300,000 families and businesses nationwide, noted that the Miami-Dade Circuit Court previously determined that Estrella Enterprises defaulted on the terms of their note and mortgage. In addition, the property in question is a warehouse Estrella owns and is valued at over $10.35 million.
“We also want to make clear that we do not condone the statement made by Mendez & Mendez, and it does not represent the views or values we hold as a company,” Navarro said in a statement. “We fully understand the impact that foreclosures can have, and we work diligently to explore every viable alternative before taking such steps. Our goal has always been to balance the needs of our borrowers with our fiduciary responsibilities.”
‘Sanctioned by the Court’
Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University College of Law and an expert not involved in the matter, noted that Rule 4-4.4(b) of the Florida ethics rules leaves no room for misunderstanding in this situation.
Jarvis said, “The rule states: ‘A lawyer who receives a document or electronically stored information relating to the representation of the lawyer’s client and knows or reasonably should know that the document was inadvertently sent must promptly notify the sender.’”
“Thus, while there is a duty to notify the other side, there is no prohibition, except in very unusual circumstances not relevant here, on then using the document for whatever purpose the receiving lawyer chooses,” Jarvis said. “Additionally, the ethics rules make it clear that lawyers cannot mock or disparage an opposing party.”
He also emphasized that a lawyer cannot engage in conduct intended to defraud or mislead the court.
“Assuming for the moment that everything alleged in the emergency motion is true,” Jarvis added, “both Benworth Capital Partners and its lawyers have violated many ethical rules and should expect to be harshly sanctioned by the court.”
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