Of course, the banks have also dragged out this reckoning through shoddy paperwork, botched modifications and general dysfunction as they struggled to cope with a flood of soured mortgages. Many cases were passed among lawyers like hot potatoes and lay dormant on court dockets.

Since housing prices peaked in 2006, roughly 6.7 million Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure. An additional 800,000 people could share that fate by the time all the delinquent mortgages from the crisis are settled, according to a Moody’s Analytics estimate.

“This whole event is going to take 10 years to sort out,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “So we probably have one or maybe two more years to go until it is all over.”

But the laws in places like Florida could prove to be a wild card. In a state where “hanging chads” helped decide the 2000 presidential election, a legal technicality could help settle the state’s foreclosure crisis.

Lawyers for homeowners in Florida contend that lenders have five years to file for foreclosure after a homeowner defaults, normally after several months of missed payments, and the mortgage is “accelerated,” meaning that the bank says that the debt is due all at once. Banks say they have many more years to file for foreclosure, arguing that the five-year clock resets every time a homeowner misses a monthly payment — regardless of when the mortgage was accelerated. Some Florida judges have agreed.

The statute of limitations does not halt a foreclosure case that is continuing in court. But in some Florida courts, homeowners’ lawyers have argued that once a foreclosure is dismissed even for technical reasons, the lender cannot refile a new foreclosure to seize the home if the statute of limitations has passed. Still, the lender has some recourse: It can keep a lien on the house that must be paid off if the property is ever sold.

The issue is now before the Florida Supreme Court.

The lenders’ lawyers have warned in court papers that if the state’s high court sides with the homeowners, “it would spawn a public policy hazard” and dissuade banks from extending mortgages in Florida in the future.