Editor’s note: This report is part of an occasional series about the legality of profits being made from the publication of foreclosure notices, as well as the roles of banks, trustees and the courts in this state-mandated process. Follow along at www.bendbulletin.com/foreclosures.

The Jefferson Review may not have a full-time reporter, but this small weekly newspaper 20 miles south of Salem is going toe-to-toe with the biggest papers in the state.

It’s a competition, however, that has more to do with lawyers than journalists.

The Review, with a weekly circulation of about 400, is one of the state’s biggest publishers of legal notices — announcements required by state law to be published in newspapers, informing citizens of public meetings and notices on issues such as pending foreclosures.

Dozens of attorneys on the West Coast have been using the Review to publish hundreds of notices of upcoming foreclosure sales of Marion County homes.

But they may be breaking the law to do it.

Many foreclosure sale notices published in the Review concern homes in Salem, and in communities farther north, such as Keizer and Woodburn, where the Review has no circulation. By shunning publication of these notices in the Salem Statesman Journal, with a daily circulation above 35,000 and a readership extending across Marion County, these attorneys are challenging Oregon Revised Statues, which say a public notice must be published “in that newspaper which the moving party considers best suited to give actual notice.”

This is consistent with the legislative purpose to ensure that as much attention is drawn to an upcoming sale as possible, so that the highest possible sale price is achieved.

Several legal experts question whether publication in the tiny Jefferson Review meets that requirement.

When Woodburn residents Felix and Julia Aguilar defaulted on their mortgage, Gresham-based attorney Sia Rezvani placed four trustee notices of sale in the Review, on consecutive weeks between Aug. 2 and Aug. 23.

Rezvani defended his decision not to publish in the Statesman Journal, saying the Review would charge a fraction of the cost of the Statesman Journal for the title company servicing the Aguilars’ loan, California-based Placer Title Co.

When asked if he was worried the Aguilars’ foreclosure sale could be rescinded because the state’s best notice law may not be met, he responded that “the requirement is that the publication be run for four consecutive weeks in a paper with general circulation in the county.”

“I’ll do anything to avoid the higher cost for my client” — the lending institution — that would come with publishing in the Statesman Journal, he added. “I’m not concerned at all” about possible legal ramifications in this case.

Opposing views

But several experts in foreclosure and media law said Rezvani’s interpretation of the law regarding public notices is wrong, with consequences that could possibly lead to the nullification of countless foreclosures.

Rezvani’s comment that the requirement stops at four notices in a paper that circulates in the county ignores the rest of the law’s language, which has been in place for nearly a century, said Kyu Ho Youm, a media law professor at the University of Oregon.

“The notice is public,” Youm said. “It should be specifically designed for those who need that information. That doesn’t mean using the newspaper that is most affordable. If the law is flagrantly being ignored or disregarded in terms of the basic legal requirements, there could be some kind of argument as to whether (a foreclosure notice) could be challenged.”

There isn’t a great deal of legal precedent for the state to look at in this arena, said David Ambrose, an attorney specializing in foreclosures in the Bend and Portland areas.

In one Oregon court case, involving The Bulletin and The Source Weekly earlier this year, it was ruled that The Source did not meet the qualification to publish legal notices because it did not have paid subscribers.

That ruling has been appealed.

While the law is, to a certain extent, open to interpretation, Ambrose said the case of the Jefferson Review is possibly one where the best-notice law could be used to prevent notices being published there.

“You could make an argument, of course, that the main Salem newspaper would be the better publication” for Salem notices, he said.

Rezvani, for his part, has only used the Review a handful of times. Other attorneys and trustee service companies have published in the Review more often.

In the paper’s Aug. 16 edition, Salem attorney Erich Paetsch published five foreclosure notices on Salem properties. Seattle attorney Julie Hamilton published three notices in the same edition. California attorneys Christopher Dorr and Megan Curtis published two each. Washington state attorney Kelly Sutherland published six notices.

Sutherland declined to comment. None of the other attorneys responded to interview requests this week.

Other frequent publishers of notices in the Review include Northwest Trustee Services, a company whose co-owner is under investigation by the Oregon State Bar; and ReconTrust, a subsidiary of Bank of America.

Messages left with officials at both companies this week were not returned.

An online proposal

While some lawyers are looking for the cheapest way to meet the legal requirements of public notice, the Oregon State Bar is considering a proposal that would remove all notices, both foreclosures and notices from government about meetings and budgets, for example, from newspapers entirely.

Several members of the bar’s Board of Governors, the organization’s policymaking committee, said at a July 27 meeting that they hoped to take notices out of newspapers and publish them on a website run by the bar, with proceeds going to the Oregon Law Foundation. That proposal would have to be passed by the Oregon Legislature.

But some board members said at the July meeting that the proposal was riddled with uncertainty. Many rural residents don’t have access to high-speed Internet, Klamath Falls attorney and Board of Governors member Barbara Dilaconi said. Others raised issues including whether the bar had the expertise to run such a website, and how many employees of newspapers that collect and publish notices would be laid off if the proposal was approved.

The board voted 11-6 to shelve the proposal. But members are expected to meet today and discuss whether to take it to the bar association’s House of Delegates, a larger collection of members that help the board draw up policy.

“The vote was a clear majority,” said Sylvia Stevens, the Bar’s executive director. “They decided not to go forward.”

The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association has been posting all of its members’ notices online for years, ONPA executive director Laurie Hieb said.

The bar’s proposal to set up its own website would merely duplicate ONPA’s existing online service, Hieb said. But it would eliminate notices in print publications.

More than 23 percent of Oregon homes do not have access to the Internet, according to a 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and that number increases to 34 percent in rural Oregon.

“People aren’t just going to go to a website in the hopes they might trip across a notice that affects them. But they will read a local paper and trip across the notices as they’re reading,” she said. “The goal is to get each notice in front of the most number of eyes.”

This is part of an occasional series about the legality of profits being made from the publication of foreclosure notices, as well as the roles of banks, trustees and the courts. Follow the series at www.bend bulletin.com/foreclosures.