Oh, for the love of Goddess…
With the election of Bridget McCormack on November 6th, Democrats in Michigan picked up a precious seat on the state’s highest court. These seats are hard-won and, in McCormack’s case, it took the effort of a crack campaign staff coupled with volunteers across the state working their tails off to make it happen. Now we’re about to take a step back as current Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway appears ready to lose her seat.
By cheating on the rules for getting permission to have a short sale of her million-dollar mansion, Hathaway is now in deep trouble.
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway and her husband claimed in a court filing Friday their mortgage lender financially benefited from allowing them to sell a Grosse Pointe Park home for $600,000 less than they borrowed — an argument some legal experts found baffling.Hathaway and her husband, attorney Michael Kingsley, were responding to allegations leveled last month by federal prosecutors that they hid a posh second home in Florida — valued at $644,000 — while seeking a financial hardship from a bank to escape $600,000 in mortgage debt owed on the home on Lake St. Clair.
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade contends the two attorneys committed bank fraud when they transferred the Florida home to Kingsley’s daughter and got it deeded back after the short sale was complete.
Hathaway isn’t denying that she broke the law. She is, however, claiming that it’s okay that she broke the law because her bank came out better than it would have had she simply defaulted on her mortgage.
A judge said this.
A judge ON THE STATE SUPREME COURT!!!
This enrages me to no end. She absolutely needs to be tossed off the court. How can we have any faith in our judicial system if the wealthy judges that sit on it think it’s fine to play fast and loose with the laws that the rest of us must follow? Hathaway had one home worth nearly $1.5 million when she bought it and another worth $644,000 in Florida. She got caught in the market crash just like a whole lot of other Michiganders but figured out a way to skate out of it by breaking the law. And now she wants us to believe it’s okay that she did that because the bank lost less money.
Hathaway owes everyone across the state that helped her win her seat on the bench a huge apology. She also owes every Democrat in Michigan an apology. It’s as if she doesn’t realize how damn hard it is to get a Democrat elected to the state Supreme Court. We worked hard to help her secure her spot and she has repaid us in this way.
For shame.
[CC Facepalm image credit: Cesar Astudillo | Flickr]
