The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey doesn't usually get flooded with requests for a 15-month-old testimony from a personal filer's case.
But the testimony of Linda DeMartini, operational team leader for the litigation management department at Bank of America Home Loans, has been in hot demand since Nov. 19.
That's when American Banker, citing the judge's ruling in the case a few days earlier, reported that DeMartini had told the court that Countrywide (now a part of B of A) routinely didn't bother to transfer essential documents for loans sold to investors. (Gretchen Morgensen mentioned the ruling in her New York Times column the next day.)
Bank of America sent us and other news outlets a written statement in which Larry Platt, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates in Washington and an external counsel for the bank, said that DeMartini "was asked about a process outside her normal scope of responsibilities and in an entirely different department from where she worked. A review of her testimony shows she later clarified that she was not comfortable testifying about the circumstances under which original loan documents would move, or whether and to what extent they ever are moved. This would include the initial delivery of original loan documents to the trustee."
Late last week American Banker contacted Platt and asked for a copy of the testimony. He said he wasn't authorized to send it to us. So we called the court, which referred us to a transcription service. The document set us back $60, but we're saving interested readers the expense, time and trouble, by posting it right here.
