Track the fallout from the mortgage meltdown (or the uptick, if you’re a bankruptcy lawyer) in our roundup of stories about the battered economy’s effects on the legal profession.
“If other [non-subprime cases] are pushed aside, hopefully it will be short term and not long term,” he said.
Federal Public Defender Barry Portman said his office would manage the volume of cases once they started coming in. On an individual basis, simple bank fraud cases are not particularly time intensive for prosecutors, he said.
“Attempting to find a defense may take some more rooting around,” Portman said.
Alameda, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties will be the prime territories where federal efforts will be focused, Russoniello said. According to the real estate Web site dqnews.com, those three counties combined for nearly 11,000 notices of default in the first quarter of 2008, compared with 4,600 at the same point last year.
The public defender still hopes prosecutors do more than a high volume of smaller cases.
“You can build statistics with cases you don’t have to devote a lot of resources for, but hopefully they will look at what the best use of those resources are,” he said.
