Media Spotlight, Public Interest Lawyer's Efforts Shame BofA, Fannie Into Returning Foreclosed Home, Giving Sustainable Loan Mod To Elderly Retiree

In Jamaica, Queens, columnist Joe Nocera writes in The New York Times:

• In physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that the process of observing subatomic particles affects their behavior. We have a similar principle in journalism: the process of reporting a story can sometimes affect the behavior of those being reported on. Last Wednesday, the Heisenberg Journalism Principle was on full display in a courtroom at the Queens County Courthouse, in New York.

• The case involved Lilla Roberts, the 73-year-old retired physical therapist I wrote about last month, whose home in Jamaica, N.Y., had been foreclosed on last summer by Bank of America without her knowledge and turned over to Fannie Mae, which was in the process of trying to evict her. With the help of a young public interest lawyer, Elizabeth Lynch, Ms. Roberts filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping the eviction and reversing the foreclosure, something Ms. Lynch conceded was a long shot.

For more, see Shamed Into Altering a Mortgage.