- Plaintiffs in class action suit against JPMorgan Chase & Co., who were fraudulently charged unnecessary home inspection fees, argue that the bank cannot avoid class certification because Chase admitted that “determining whether an inspection was reasonable requires an assessment of the borrower’s and property’s individual circumstances.” The plaintiffs claim “Chase cannot turn back time and do now what it was required to do then.”
- Deutsche Bank AG and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. settle in suit accusing Deutsche Bank of misleading investors over approximately $125 million in residential mortgage-backed securities by failing to determine the accuracy of the statements in its offering documents.
Tag Archives: class action
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- NY federal court approves Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. and UBS Securities LLC settlement for $235 million in class action from pension fund for false prospectuses in mortgage-backed securities.
- Better Markets, a financial reform advocacy group, files brief in support of $1.3 billion penalty for Bank of America Corp. for fraud in one of its programs, “Hustle”, which allegedly ripped off Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Investors filed suit against US Bank NA in New York for failing to act in their best interests in regard to mortgage-backed security trust losses.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- The Third Circuit upholds class certification in case against PNC Bank NA, in which individuals are alleging the bank participated in an illegal home equity lending scheme.
- Residential Credit Solutions Inc., a mortgage servicing company, will pay $1.6 million in restitution and fines, according to the CFPB, for many violations, but specifically for issues with loan modifications and treating consumers as if they had defaulted.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Quicken Loans Inc. argues that its suit against the federal government is valid because it is more than just a fraud case. It claims that it is about broader issues with government housing programs.
- A class action suit against JPMorgan Chase Bank NA will not be dismissed over failure to file timely mortgage satisfactions even though one of the plaintiffs rejected a settlement offer for more than she could get from a court judgment.
- An administrative judge denied that the SEC had shown fraud in commercial mortgage-backed securities suit against Standard & Poor’s former executive, Barbara Duka, because the SEC failed to show that S&P had done anything wrong, let alone Duka.
- IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s suit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. remains intact for losses after a $73.2 million purchase of residential mortgage-backed securities. Goldman Sachs argued that the suit was beyond the German 3-year statute of limitations.
- Law360 compiles lists of “The Top Banking Cases In The First Half of 2015.”
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- The CFPB increased PHH Corp.’s penalty to $109 million from $6.4 million on appeal, while upholding an administrative judge’s ruling that the firm was involved in a mortgage insurance kickback scheme.
- A class of PHH borrowers have been granted cert to the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that PHH Corp. violated the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.
- NY Court of Appeals bars mortgage-backed securities suit for $330 million against Deutsche Bank AG due to a six-year statute of limitations that started when the contract was signed.
- Nomura Holdings Inc. is appealing $806 million verdict in suit brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for selling bad mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- The Securities and Exchange Commission brought suit against a New York broker for $4.1 million for allegedly selling unregistered securities through several entities.
Seeking Justice Through Litigation
Judge Caproni (SDNY) issued an Opinion and Order in Adkins v. Morgan Stanley, No. 12-CV-7667 (May 14, 2015). It opens,
This is one of many cases arising out of the collapse of the housing market. This one comes with a twist: homeowners in Detroit who received subprime loans seek to hold a single investment bank responsible under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) for discriminating against African-American borrowers, based on their claim that African-Americans were more likely than similarly-situated white borrowers to receive so-called “Combined-Risk loans.” Plaintiffs allege that Morgan Stanley so infected the market for residential mortgages — and for mortgages written by New Century Mortgage Company, a now defunct loan originator, in particular — that it bears responsibility for the disparate impact of New Century’s lending practices. Although Plaintiffs advance creative theories, their class action lawsuit founders on the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. (1-2, footnote omitted)
Judge Caproni notes that she is “not unsympathetic to Plaintiff’s claims,” she concludes that this class action lawsuit is an inappropriate vehicle to rectify the wrong that Plaintiffs allege Morgan Stanley perpetrated.” (2) I am not an expert on the law of class actions, but the opinion does seem to identify a number of ways in which the proposed class is “unworkable.” (2)
We are now nearly ten years in from the start of the financial crisis and it seems like we can get a broad sense of whether justice has been served. My instinct is that many people would say “No,” a resounding “No!”
At first glance that might seem odd, particularly to the shareholders and management of financial institutions who have paid tens of billions of dollars in fines and judgments. But there is a strong sense that those who have been harmed have not been able to get their day in court with those who did the harming. A case like this reveals the limitations of litigation as a means for seeking justice. Not every injustice is capable of being remedied in a court of law.
What does this tell us about preparing for the aftermath of the next crisis? How can laws be changed now to ensure that the right people and institutions are held accountable when it hits? While there are no easy answers to these questions, lawmakers should consider whether the scope of organizational liability is properly defined, whether agents of organizations are properly held accountable and whether organizations working in tandem with each other can be properly held accountable for the harms that they cause collectively. Easier said than done, I know, but still worth the effort.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Ocwen and Assurant settle with homeowners for $140 million in class action suit, in which the homeowners alleged that Ocwen received kickbacks by inflating premium costs for forced-placed insurance.
- New York’s Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed dismissal of suit against UBS AG for $30 million, brought by Hanwha Life Insurance Co. (a Korean corporation) claiming that NY courts do not have an interest in adjudicating the suit. Hanwha purchased $30 million in credit-linked notes from UBS that turned out to be worthless. It was trying to recover its losses because it relied on UBS’s advice in purchasing the notes.
- CFPB and the Maryland Attorney General filed suit and settlement consent orders against a title company and participants in an alleged illegal mortgage-kickback scheme.
- After the National Credit Union Administration Board (NCUA) filed a complaint against HSBC for failing as trustee of $2 billion in residential mortgage-backed securities trusts, HSBC claims that the regulator lacks standing to represent the trusts and is barred by Delaware’s three-year statute of limitations.
- Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank moved to dismiss fives suits from BlackRock Inc., Pacific Investment Management Co. and NCUA for allegedly failing to watch over 850 RMBS trusts as the trustees.