- Quicken Loans Inc. filed a complaint against the Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development claiming that they tried to get Quicken to make false admissions during a settlement. The Government in turn sued Quicken under the False Claims Act for improper underwriting of mortgages and benefitting under the Federal Housing Administration insurance payouts.
- The United States Supreme Court denied cert to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which argued that using contracts rather than grants to fund Section 8 public housing projects would impair the program.
- The Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived suit against Citigroup. The claims, which alleged that Citigroup tricked a Korean bank into taking $25 million in toxic collateralized debt obligations, were dismissed in the New York District Court in March 2013.
- Federal court requires RBS Securities to hand over which specific loans it is going to re-underwrite to National Credit Union Administration after allegedly causing the failure of at least two credit unions by misleading investors over hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities.
- Bank of America asks Second Circuit to vacate a $1.3 billion fine after jury found BofA had defrauded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac using its “High-Speed Swim Lane” program.
Tag Archives: National Credit Union Administration
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Court denies US Bank’s opportunity to revive suit against Citigroup over hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities sold during the financial crisis.
- IL court refuses to dismiss suit against Bank of America over lowering underwriting standards for borrowers protected by the Fair Housing Act.
- National Credit Union Administration sues HSBC claiming it failed as trustee for $2 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities trusts and lead to the downfall of five credit unions.
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- Shareholders of Deutsche Bank petitioned for cert to the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify the standard for a claim for pleading a fraudulent claim under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 following the Second Circuit tossing their suit in July 2014.
- 10th Circuit revives National Credit Union Administration’s $550 million suit against Barclays for misrepresentation of the quality of over $555 million in RMBS.
- First wave of Hurricane Sandy cases settle with FEMA and insurers over the improper cutting of the homeowners’ payouts following the storm.
Reiss on FIRREA Storm
Law360 quoted me in Bold 10th Circ. Opinion Muddies FIRREA Challenges. The article opens,
The Tenth Circuit last week gave a strong argument as to why a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has no bearing on one federal agency’s ability to sue over soured mortgage-backed securities, but that won’t stop big banks from trying to convince different courts otherwise, legal experts say.
The appeals court’s opinion said a June high court ruling did not alter its original ruling that the National Credit Union Administration Board’s suit against Nomura Home Equity Loan Inc. and a number of other MBS originators was not time-barred.
The Supreme Court had found that a lawsuit by North Carolina residents under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act was time-barred by the state’s statute of repose
But the regulator of federally chartered credit unions is bringing its claim under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, and the appeals court said that law’s so-called extender statute was not subject to the same limitations the Supreme Court had found in the Superfund pollution cleanup law at the heart of CTS Corp. v. Waldburger.
Rather, the language of FIRREA and its legislative history made it clear Congress had intended the law to have its own statute of limitations and not be bound by other statutes of repose, the appeals panel wrote, responding to a Supreme Court order that it take a second look at its earlier decision.
Before the Tenth Circuit issued its decision, defense attorneys had looked to the Supreme Court’s remand as a chance to give banks some relief from the lingering hangover of government lawsuits, many of which have ended with banks coughing up hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in damages.
And it’s clear banks will still fight for that relief. In a motion for summary judgment Friday, attorneys for RBS told a Connecticut district court judge he should toss an FHFA suit brought under the extender statute of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, in light of the time bar established by the Supreme Court in Waldburger.
In doing so, the attorneys also urged the judge to disregard the Tenth Circuit’s opinion, arguing it was flawed.
“Nomura, of course, is not controlling in this circuit, and the opinion on remand fails to faithfully apply the analytical framework established in Waldburger, instead sidestepping Waldburger by focusing on superficial distinctions between the CERCLA and NCUA extender statutes,” the attorneys wrote.
Experts say such disputes will continue on.
“The debate is not over by any stretch of the imagination,” David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, said. “There’s enough at stake for powerful and well-financed institutions that this will be played out to the fullest.”
While legal experts say they can’t predict how other jurisdictions will move on similar questions about timeliness under FIRREA, they say the Tenth Circuit approached the task of reaffirming its earlier opinion in a way that appeared designed to withstand high court scrutiny.
“It is a thorough opinion. I think that other courts will take this opinion very seriously,” Reiss said.
Running CERCLA around FIRREA
Law360 quoted me in High Court Environmental Ruling Could Clear Air For Banks (behind a paywall). The article reads in part,
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a federal environmental law does not preempt state statutes of repose has inspired banks and other targets of Wall Street enforcers to test the decision’s power to finally fend off lingering financial crisis-era cases on timeliness grounds.
The high court on June 9 found that the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act could not extend the 10-year statute of repose in a North Carolina environmental cleanup suit in the in CTS Corp. v. Waldburger case. Although the decision pertained to a case outside of the financial realm, attorneys say it could limit the ability of federal financial regulators to bring claims on behalf of failed financial institutions under two of their favored tools: the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act.
That’s because the defendants in those cases, including banks but others as well, will now be able to argue that regulators like the National Credit Union Administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. missed their chance to bring claims on behalf of institutions in receivership.
Given the Supreme Court’s interpretation, the regulators may be on shaky ground.
“The government is going to have a much more difficult time sustaining the arguments it’s been making after CTS,” said Jeffrey B. Wall, a partner with Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and a former assistant solicitor general.
In its CTS ruling, the Supreme Court found that CERCLA does not preempt state statutes of repose like the one in North Carolina, citing CERCLA’s exclusive use of the phrase “statute of limitations.”
Statutes of repose and statutes of limitations are distinct enough terms in their usage that it’s proper to conclude that Congress didn’t intend to preempt statutes of repose when it crafted CERCLA, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said in the majority opinion. The justice cited a 1982 congressional report on CERCLA that recommended repealing state statutes of limitations and statutes of repose but acknowledged that they were not equivalent.
According to a memo released June 10 by Sullivan & Cromwell, both FIRREA and HERA are susceptible to similar readings by courts.
Both statutes include extenders that allow government agencies suing on behalf of failed financial institutions to move beyond statutes of limitations on state law claims. However, much like CERCLA, both say nothing about extending statutes of repose, the memo said.
And that could make a major difference for a large number of defendants trying to fend off claims from the FDIC, NCUA and FHFA, Wall said.
* * *
The CTS ruling is likely to play out in cases brought by financial regulators in smaller cases over losses incurred by failed financial institutions using FIRREA and HERA. But FIRREA has also become a favored tool in the U.S. Department of Justice’s big game hunts against ratings agency Standard & Poor’s and Bank of America.
Because those cases are largely predicated on federal claims, the CTS case is unlikely to be a help for those institutions, according to Brooklyn Law School professor David Reiss.
“I don’t read it as having an extension on the higher-profile FIRREA cases,” he said.
But even if CTS is limited to state law claims brought by financial regulators, that could have a major impact given the sheer number of cases the FDIC, NCUA and FHFA bring.
Qualified Mortgage Fair Lending Concerns Quashed
Federal regulators (the FRB, CFPB, FDIC, NCUA and OCC) announced that “a creditor’s decision to offer only Qualified Mortgages would, absent other factors, elevate a supervised institution’s fair lending risk.” This announcement was intended to address lenders’ concerns that they could be stuck between a rock (QM regulations) and a hard place (fair lending requirements pursuant to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act). For instance, a lender might want to limit its risk of lawsuits relating to the mortgages it issues that could arise under a variety of state and federal consumer protection statutes by only issuing QMs only to find itself the defendant in a Fair Housing Act lawsuit that alleges that its lending practices had a disproportionate adverse impact on a protected class.
The five agencies issued an Interagency Statement on Fair Lending Compliance and the Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage Standards Rule that gives some context for this guidance:
the Agencies recognize that some creditors’ existing business models are such that all of the loans they originate will already satisfy the requirements for Qualified Mortgages. For instance, a creditor that has decided to restrict its mortgage lending only to loans that are purchasable on the secondary market might find that — in the current market — its loans are Qualified Mortgages under the transition provision that gives Qualified Mortgage status to most loans that are eligible for purchase, guarantee, or insurance by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or certain federal agency programs.
With respect to any fair lending risk, the situation here is not substantially different from what creditors have historically faced in developing product offerings or responding to regulatory or market changes. The decisions creditors will make about their product offerings in response to the Ability-to-Repay Rule are similar to the decisions that creditors have made in the past with regard to other significant regulatory changes affecting particular types of loans. Some creditors, for example, decided not to offer “higher-priced mortgage loans” after July 2008, following the adoption of various rules regulating these loans or previously decided not to offer loans subject to the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act after regulations to implement that statute were first adopted in 1995. We are unaware of any ECOA or Regulation B challenges to those decisions. Creditors should continue to evaluate fair lending risk as they would for other types of product selections, including by carefully monitoring their policies and practices and implementing effective compliance management systems. As with any other compliance matter, individual cases will be evaluated on their own merits. (2-3)
Lenders and their representatives have raised this issue as a significant obstacle to a vibrant residential mortgage market. This interagency statement should put this concern to rest.
These Are A Few of My Favorite Things
Along with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, reforming Government-Sponsored Enterprises and rationalizing rating agency regulation are two of my favorite things. The Federal Housing Finance Agency noticed a proposed rulemaking to remove some of the references to credit ratings from Federal Home Loan Bank regulations. This is part of a broader mandate contained in Dodd Frank (specifically, section 939A) to reduce the regulatory privilege that the rating agencies had accumulated over the years. This regulatory privilege resulted from the rampant reliance of ratings from Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (mostly S&P, Moody’s and Fitch) in regulations concerning financial institutions and financial products.
The proposed new definition of “investment quality” reads as follows:
Investment quality means a determination made by the Bank with respect to a security or obligation that based on documented analysis,including consideration of the sources for repayment on the security or obligation:
(1) There is adequate financial backing so that full and timely payment of principal and interest on such security or obligation is expected; and
(2) There is minimal risk that that timely payment of principal or interest would not occur because of adverse changes in economic and financial conditions during the projected life of the security or obligation. (30790)
The FHFA expects that such a definition will preclude the FHLBs from relying “principally” on an NRSRO “rating or third party analysis.” (30787)
This definition does not blaze a new path for the purposes of Dodd Frank section 939A as it is in line with similar rulemakings by the NCUA, FDIC and OCC. But it does the trick of reducing the unthinking reliance on ratings by NRSROs for FHLBs. Forcing financial institutions to “apply internal analytic standards and criteria to determine the credit quality of a security or obligation” has to be a good thing as it should push them to look at more than just a credit rating to make their iinvestment decisions. (30784) This is not to say that we will avoid bubbles as a result of this proposed rule, but it will force FHLBs to take more responsibility for their decisions and be able to document their decision-making process, which should be at least a bit helpful when markets become frothy once again.
When the cycle turns, when greed sings
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember
my favorite things
and then I don’t feel so bad!
