This website is a personal blog maintained by Steve Glista, who is a licensed attorney in the states of Michigan and Oregon. Steve is a lawyer at Honigman, Miller, Schwartz and Cohn, LLP. Opinions or comments expressed on this site belong to the commenter or the author and do not represent legal advice from or the official position of the Honigman firm.
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By steve, on June 22nd, 2012%
I’m a huge fan of the Portland-style street food scene. In Portland, food trucks are regulated as vehicles as long as they have wheels and they aren’t connected to permanent utilities like power or gas. This allows carts to assemble into “pods” in surface-level parking lots, so people can walk by a pod and choose from any of ten or twenty different kinds of food.
There are some obvious locations that would be good for pods to form if Kalamazoo adopts the same kind of approach. Prime locations might be e.g. between the courthouse and Bronson Park, or any of the lots between the Entertainment District and the festival area. Or one of the lots near the train/bus station. Portland also had success with pods formed near popular bars that have lousy food (Bell’s, I’m pretty much looking right at you).
So when I see articles like this one, I’m hopeful that we can find the path. But questions like this:
Another member, Bjorn Green, asked how the DDA could regulate the design of food trucks and how the odors coming from a congregation of food trucks would affect neighboring businesses.
“How are we going to deal with the congregation if there’s four or . . . → Read More: Food Carts in Kalamazoo? Protect us from funky smells!
By steve, on June 6th, 2011%
Just because the borrowers were behind on the loan, that doesn’t mean that the lender is free to ignore the law:
Although home owners Ivan and Katherine Hooker have been in default on their loan since 2009, Judge Owen Panner found that the bank and Mortgage Electronic foreclosed on the couple’s loan after too many unrecorded transfers left the couple in the dark about who to contact for a loan modification.
“While I recognize that the plaintiffs have failed to make any payments on the note since September 2009, that failure does not permit defendants to violate Oregon law,” Panner wrote.
This should not do anything to help the distressed property market in Oregon. If lenders have to go to court every time they want to foreclose, and if the documents have as many obvious flaws as the paperwork in this case…
I sure wouldn’t want to be a mortgage lender trying to clear title on . . . → Read More: Oregon Federal Judge Rules Against MERS To Halt Foreclosure
By steve, on June 4th, 2011%
I’m a huge fan of Portland’s street food scene. I’m going to miss the pod at 4th and Hall, but I’m looking forward to setting up digs in the Big Pink right across the street from the cart pod at 5th and Stark, and I’m that much closer to the big pod up on 10th. Now that summer’s here, it’s cart heaven.
So this is a great time for the Food Carts Portland blog to run an article about starting up a food cart here in PDX. If you have any interest in #cartlife you should go over there and . . . → Read More: Portland Food Cart HowTo
By steve, on March 5th, 2011%
Of course MERS is the culprit again. From OregonLive:
Donald E. McCoy III filed for bankruptcy protection in part to block U.S. Bank from foreclosing on his Central Point home. He then sued the bank and MERS, along with his original lender BNC Mortgage Inc., claiming they had not properly recorded BNC’s subsequent sale of the loan to investors.
Chief Bankruptcy Judge Frank R. Alley III found McCoy’s allegation persuasive and refused to grant the bank’s request for a dismissal.
“Oregon law permits foreclosure without the benefit of judicial proceeding only when the interest of the beneficiary (lender) is clearly documented in a public record,” Alley wrote. “When the public record is lacking, the foreclosing beneficiary must prove its interest in a judicial proceeding.”
In response to that ruling, First American Financial Corp., one of the nation’s largest title insurers, began warning lenders and buyers in title documents that it wouldn’t insure titles with a cloudy public record in Oregon, company attorney Alan Brickley said.
And of course, if you can’t get title insurance, you can’t get a mortgage. Good luck to folks in Oregon trying to sell their homes- you’re going to . . . → Read More: Foreclosures Halted in Oregon
By steve, on December 11th, 2010%
For many Portland businesses, this is probably good news:
[T]he Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is about to release updated “Green Guides,” which are expected to narrowly redefine and limit companies’ and marketers’ abilities to make environmental claims about their products. Once the updated guides are released, they will be the first environmental-marketing guidelines to be issued in the past twelve years.
Sure, more regulation means more expense associated with compliance, and that’s bad. But hopefully it will also mean less cheaters in . . . → Read More: FTC to Regulate Green Labeling
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