Loan Mod Racketeering?

James Cagney in "Public Enemy"

James Cagney and Mae Clarke in “Public Enemy”

Bloomberg BNA Banking quoted me in BofA Must Face RICO Claims on Loan Modifications (behind paywall). It opens,

Bank of America must face claims that it and another company violated federal anti-racketeering laws by denying loan modifications to eligible borrowers, a federal appeals court said Aug. 15 ( George v. Urban Settlement Svcs., 10th Cir., No. 14-cv-01427, 8/15/16 ).

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reinstates purported class claims by Richard George and other borrowers that Bank of America and Urban Settlement Services (“Urban”), a settlement company, feigned compliance with guidelines under the Home Affordable Modification program (HAMP) while modifying as few loans as possible.

A district court dismissed the claims, saying the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently allege the existence of an association-in-fact enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), but the Tenth Circuit reversed, saying they made a “facially plausible” claim.

The ruling sends the case back to the district court to consider that and other allegations.

Case Moves Forward

The decision is the latest in connection with HAMP, a 2009 Treasury Department effort aimed at stabilizing the housing market that was closely related to disbursement of government funds to banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Bank of America received $45 billion in TARP funds.

The plaintiffs are represented by Steve Berman, Ari Y. Brown, Kevin K. Green, and Tyler S. Weaver in the Seattle and San Diego offices of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.

“We are more than pleased the court has ruled our complaint has sufficiently alleged that Bank of America’s massive HAMP mortgage-modification program was in fact a RICO enterprise,” Berman, the firm’s managing partner, said in an Aug. 15 statement. “For years, we have tirelessly fought this major Wall Street kingpin to right the wrongs it committed against hundreds of thousands of homeowners and taxpayers who footed the $45 billion government bailout BoA took in, only to have it used to propagate a scheme to squeeze every dollar from BoA customers and wrongfully foreclose thousands of homes in the process.”

Bank of America spokesman Rick Simon said the bank denies the claims, which he said paint a false picture of the bank’s practices and its employees.

“In fact, Bank of America has been an industry leader in HAMP and other beneficial mortgage modifications,” Simon told Bloomberg BNA in an Aug. 15 e-mail. “We are reviewing the Circuit court’s decision and considering our options.”

The lawsuit, which involved loans originally held by Countrywide Home Loans, said Bank of America and Urban were part of a fraudulent scheme to keep borrowers from acquiring permanent HAMP loan modifications, allegedly because defaulted loans were more profitable.

They said Urban functioned as a “black hole” for HAMP-related documents submitted by borrowers, ensuring that trial modifications would not be made permanent.

Tenth Circuit Reverses

In its September 2014 ruling, the district court said the plaintiffs failed to allege, as required by RICO, that Bank of America was distinct from the alleged racketeering enterprise.

The Tenth Circuit reversed in a decision by Judge Nancy Moritz, who wrote for a three-judge panel. The plaintiffs, she said, “don’t contend that either a parent corporation or its subsidiary corporation is the enterprise. Rather, they assert that BOA and Urban—two separate legal entities— joined together, along with several other entities, to form and conduct the affairs of the BOA-Urban association-in-fact enterprise.”

According to the plaintiffs, she said, Bank of America and Urban “performed distinct roles within the enterprise while acting in concert with other entities to further the enterprise’s common goal of wrongfully denying HAMP applications.”

That is enough to “plausibly allege” that Bank of America meets the “enterprise” requirement, she said.

Crisis Cases Continue

Brooklyn Law School Professor David Reiss said the decision shows that financial crisis-era litigation is not over. “This case is an example of litigation that arises from the supposed fixes for the crisis—fixes that were often implemented poorly, as can be seen from a variety of cases and regulatory actions,” Reiss told Bloomberg BNA in an Aug. 15 e-mail.

The lawsuit alleged in part that documents submitted by borrowers were intentionally “scattered” across various computer databases and systems, allegedly with the goal of creating the appearance that borrowers had not completed the paperwork required to convert their trial plans into permanent modifications.

Reiss called it significant that the court accepted, for purposes of a motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs’ theory that the alleged “black hole” treatment of documents could rise to the level of a RICO violation.

“While courts have held against defendants in individual cases with similar facts, the possibility that they could hold against lenders and servicers in a class action raises the stakes quite a bit for defendants,” Reiss said.

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

The GSE Litigation Footnote Everyone Is Talking About

Judge Pratt (S.D.Iowa) ruled against the plaintiffs in the GSE shareholderr litigation, Continental Western Insurance Company v. The FHFA et al. (4:14-cv-00042, Feb. 3, 2015). The Judge’s order is mostly an analysis of why this case should be dismissed because of the doctrine of issue preclusion, which bars “‘successive litigation of an issue of fact or law actually litigated and resolved in a valid court determination essential to the prior judgment . . .'” (6, quoting Supreme Court precedent). The relevant prior judgment was Judge Lamberth’s (D.D.C.) opinion in a similar case that was decided last October.

While Judge Pratt did not reach the merits because he dismissed the case, he stated in a footnote

The Court notes that even if it were to reach the merits of Continental Western’s claims, including the allegedly new claims, it would agree with the well-reasoned opinion of the very able Judge Lamberth in Perry Capital that the case must be dismissed. Specifically the Court agrees that: (1) FHFA and Treasury did not act outside the power granted to them by HERA (see Perry Capital, 2014 WL 4829559 at *8–12); (2) HERA bars Continental Western’s claims under the APA (see id. at *7); (3) Continental Western’s claims for monetary damages based on a breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against FHFA must be dismissed because they are not ripe and because Continental Western’s shares of the GSEs do not contractually guarantee them a right to dividends (see id. at *15–19); and (4) Continental Western’s claim for breach of fiduciary duty by FHFA is barred by HERA because it is a derivative claim and HERA grants all shareholder rights, including the right to bring a derivative suit, to FHFA (see id. at *13–15). The Court shares in Judge Lamberth’s observation that “[i]t is understandable for the Third Amendment, which sweeps nearly all GSE profits to Treasury, to raise eyebrows, or even engender a feeling of discomfort.” Perry Capital, 2014 WL 4829559 at *24. But it is not the role of this Court to wade into the merits or motives of FHFA and Treasury’s actions—rather the Court is limited to reviewing those actions on their face and determining if they were permissible under the authority granted by HERA. (19, n.6)

As I have noted before, this is not a surprising result. What remains surprising is how so many analysts refuse to see how these cases might be decided this way.

This is not to say that the plaintiffs’ cases are dead in the water. Appeals courts may reach a different result from those of the trial courts. But so many of those writing on this topic refuse to see any result other than a win for plaintiffs. Time for a reality check.

Big Decision in GSE Litigation

Regular readers of this blog know that I have written a lot about the shareholder suits arising from the conservatorships of Fannie and Freddie. One of the main cases is being presided over by Judge Lamberth in the District Court for the District of Columbia. This case raises a range of challenges to the government’s action: violations of the Administrative Procedures Act, violations of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and more. Judge Lamberth has issued an opinion that dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims, dealing a severe (but not fatal) blow to their cause. His conclusion captures the tenor of the whole opinion:

It is understandable for the Third Amendment, which sweeps nearly all GSE profits to Treasury, to raise eyebrows, or even engender a feeling of discomfort. But any sense of unease over the defendants’ conduct is not enough to overcome the plain meaning of HERA’s text. Here, the plaintiffs’ true gripe is with the language of a statute that enabled FHFA and, consequently, Treasury, to take unprecedented steps to salvage the largest players in the mortgage finance industry before their looming collapse triggered a systemic panic. Indeed, the plaintiffs’ grievance is really with Congress itself. It was Congress, after all, that parted the legal seas so that FHFA and Treasury could effectively do whatever they thought was needed to stabilize and, if necessary, liquidate, the GSEs. Recognizing its role in the constitutional system, this Court does not seek to evaluate the merits of whether the Third Amendment is sound financial — or even moral — policy. The Court does, however, find that HERA’s unambiguous statutory provisions, coupled with the unequivocal language of the plaintiffs’ original GSE stock certificates, compels the dismissal of all of the plaintiffs’ claims. (52)
Not one to typically say “I told you so” (or at least not on the blog), I will say that I had predicted that deference to the Executive during a time of national crisis was going to be hard for the plaintiffs to overcome. That being said, this is an extraordinarily complex cases both legally and factually so we can expect appeals up to the Supreme Court (and perhaps a return to the District Court), so it is premature to say that the plaintiffs’ claims are DOA just yet.

Unfair Loan Mod Negotiations

The Ninth Circuit issued an Opinion in Compton v. Countrywide Financial Corp. et al., (11-cv-00198 Aug. 4, 2014).  The District Court had dismissed Compton’s unfair or deceptive act or practice [UDAP] claim because she had failed to allege that the lender had “exceeded its role as a lender and owed an independent duty of care to” the borrower. (14) The Court of Appeals concluded, however, that the homeowner/plaintiff had

sufficiently alleged that BAC engaged in an “unfair or deceptive act or practice” for the purpose of withstanding a motion to dismiss. As previously noted, Compton does not base her UDAP claim on allegations that BAC failed to determine whether she would be financially capable of repaying the loan. Rather, the gist of Compton’s complaint is that BAC misled her into believing that BAC would modify her loan and would not commence foreclosure proceedings while her loan modification request remained under review. As a result of these misrepresentations, Compton engaged in prolonged negotiations, incurred transaction costs in providing and notarizing documents, and endured lengthy delays. The complaint’s description of BAC’s misleading behave or sufficiently alleges a “representation, omission, or practice” that is likely to deceive a reasonable consumer.(15)

This seems to be an important clarification about what a reasonable consumer, or at least a reasonable consumer in Hawaii, should be able to expect from a lender with which she does business.

While the Court reviews a fair amount of precedent that stands for the proposition that a lender does not owe much of a duty to a borrower, Compton seems to stand for the proposition that lenders must act consistently, at least in broad outline, with how we generally expect parties to behave in consumer transactions: telling the truth, negotiating in good faith, minimizing unnecessary transaction costs; and minimizing unnecessary delays.

In reviewing many cases with allegations such as these, it seems to me that judges are genuinely shocked by lender behavior in loan modification negotiations. It remains to be seen whether such cases will change UDAP jurisprudence in any significant way once we have worked through all of the foreclosure crisis cases.