Page 127 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

REFUSING TO TAKE THE BLAME FOR HIS ACTIONS

About 15 or 20 years ago, after I had been selling land and financing land for years and years, I sold a
10 acre tract of land to a man named Randy Norton, near the farm of Monroe Morrell in the White
Springs area.

As was my custom, 1 allowed Mr. Norton to make a reasonably small down payment, and to give me a
mortgage on the land and pay for it with monthly payments.

Despite my best and most polite efforts, Mr. Norton just simply would not pay, and when I entered
foreclosure against him, he went to Federal Court and declared Bankruptcy. This would stop the
foreclosure, for anywhere from 8 months to a year, and then he would make a payment or two and then
stop again. I entered foreclosure suits against him on four separate occasions, and he declared
Bankruptcy on four separate occasions to stop the foreclosure, and it took me years and years to get the
land back that 1 had sold him.

Nevertheless, none of this was Mr. Norton’s fault, in his mind. For those who think there is a limit on a
person’s ability to repeatedly declare bankruptcy, apparently that is not true, since he did it four times
within about a six year period.

However, the last time he declared Bankruptcy in order to stop my foreclosure suit, the Court instructed
him not to declare Bankruptcy again, and that time when the bankruptcy was discharged, 1 had him
where I wanted him, and foreclosed and took the property back.

He took the view that all of this was all my fault, and that he was not to blame in any way. In fact he felt
that so strongly, that he and a friend of his got together with a lawyer in Jacksonville, to see if there was
some way they could get back at me, and sure enough they found a way.

The United States Government has a Law that requires anybody making a loan, or selling property and
taking a mortgage back, to give the customer a document called a Truth in Lending Disclosure. I had
never heard of anybody except Banks actually using these Truth in Lending Disclosure forms, but it
came about that as a private individual engaging in that business on a regular basis, I should have been
doing it, and they entered a Class Action Lawsuit against me. Mr. Norton could not be a party to the
Suit, since by that time he had no legal standing in Court, but he persuaded his friend to pursue the
course, and their lawyer went after big bucks. There was a little known provision in that Law that their
lawyer apparently overlooked, which stipulated that if the defendant in such a case lost the case, and was
required to pay his customers a penalty for not having given the Truth in Lending Disclosure, that the
total cost to the defendant in such a case could not exceed 1% of the net worth of that defendant.

That Suit did cost me a good bit of money in legal fees, and I hired one of the outstanding Law Firms in
Jacksonville to represent me, and since the Bankruptcy Court was in Jacksonville, and I ended up havin
to pay somewhat of a penalty to all those who had been financed without being given a Truth in Lendin
Disclosure Statement.

There is a scripture in the Bible where the Lord told Abram, before he became Abraham, that the Lord
would bless those who blessed him, and curse those who cursed him. It is an interesting aspect of the
Class Action Lawsuit against me that Mr. Norton, during the course of the Suit, developed a type of
rapidly growing cancer, and died before the case ever came to trial. His buddy, who was listed as the
record plaintiff in the case, on behalf of the class, which was a subject of the Class Action Suit, has not

www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: B423BA50-F22B-4D87-A44C-403308C92982