Bank of America took a big hit when it reached a record-breaking $16.65 billion mortgage settlement with the United States Department of Justice in August. The company is likely to attempt to recoup as much of the penalty as...more
Kate Berry reported in American Banker and SourceMedia’s National Mortgage News on how a $616 servicing error snowballed into a $16 million jury verdict. It was reported that a jury last month awarded $514,000 in compensatory...more
This Monday, online real estate listing company Zillow announced that it will acquire its biggest competitor, Trulia, in a stock-for-stock purchase transaction. The acquisition has already raised the stock values of both...more
Citigroup announced last week that it will pay $7 billion to end an investigation by the U.S Department of Justice into misconduct related to its mortgage securitization practices. The blockbuster settlement came days before...more
With the mortgage crisis almost a decade in the rear-view mirror, some harmed homeowners are just now starting to see reparations for the transgressions of the country’s largest financial institutions.
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7/17/2014
/ Bank of America ,
Banks ,
Citigroup ,
Foreclosure ,
Goldman Sachs ,
JPMorgan Chase ,
Morgan Stanley ,
Mortgages ,
OCC ,
Robo-Signing ,
Settlement ,
Wall Street ,
Wells Fargo
Recently, the defendants in FDIC as Receiver for Colonial Bank v. Chase Mortgage Finance Group, et al (Civ No. 1:12-cv-06166) filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, asking the court to dismiss as time-barred the...more
Last week, Judge Kathleen Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions against Donald Trump for his initial failure to disclose a relevant insurance policy...more
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently released its Leading Market Index (LMI) on June 5th. The report revealed that out of 350 metros evaluated across the country, 56 housing markets have returned to or...more
“Robo-signing,” the term coined to refer to bank officials who quickly approved mortgage foreclosure documents without actual knowledge of the validity of the grounds for foreclosure, has been spurring lawsuits and making...more
A former goliath of the non-prime lending market, Aurora Loan Services, LLC (“ALS”), recently resolved a class-action lawsuit alleging that it fraudulently induced distressed California borrowers to enter into purported...more
As the housing market springs back to life, one demographic remains underrepresented among homebuyers. U.S. census data shows that the rate of homeownership for adults under the age of 35 has declined by almost 8% in the last...more
As detailed in an August 2013 Salon article by David Dayen and a September 2013 Bloomberg Businessweek article by Karen Weise, West Palm Beach, Florida homeowner and attorney Lynn Szymoniak helped blow the whistle on...more
Could the answers to crushing mortgage debt, homelessness and ecological degradation be one and the same? Across the globe, a ‘tiny’ movement is taking root....more
Following the financial crisis, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has received sharp criticism from the public for its seemingly weak enforcement of Wall Street’s too big to fail banks. Surprisingly, this sentiment...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (encompassing nine Western states and two Pacific islands) has held that for purposes of diversity jurisdiction a national bank is a citizen only of the state in which...more
Following months of negotiations that involved collaboration between Republicans and Democrats, Senators Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) announced Tuesday that the Senate Banking Committee had reached an agreement on...more
There is now yet another settlement in the mortgage loan industry to report. First Horizon National Corp. announced last week that it has entered into a definitive resolution agreement with Freddie Mac regarding loan...more
On Tuesday, Bank of America disclosed in its annual report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that “government regulators” in North America, Europe and Asia are investigating its foreign exchange and...more
With the Occupational Safety and Health Administration signaling its increased attention to workers’ exposure to crystalline silica, and the plaintiff bar evidently in search of new subjects for “toxic tort” claims, there is...more
We recently posted an article about whether silica exposure claims might emerge as the next toxic tort. A particular focus of that article was the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) clearly increasing...more
SEC Chair Mary Jo White announced last week that the SEC is changing its protocol relating to admissions of guilt in settlements with wrongdoers in the securities markets. Historically, SEC practice was to settle cases...more
We recently posted about a critical ruling out of New York’s intermediate state appellate court, the case of ACE Securities Corp. v. DB Structured Products, Inc., 977 N.Y.S.2d 229, 231 (N.Y.A.D. 1st Dept. Dec. 19, 2013). In...more
The real wolves of Wall Street–sixteen of America’s largest banks–could end up shelling out more than $50 billion to secure settlements from the federal government in connection with their alleged roles in the mortgage...more
In the past few years, the federal government has devoted substantial resources to scrutinizing and litigating what it perceives to be unfair, deceptive or abusive mortgage-lending practices. Looking forward, all indications...more
On December 19, 2013, correspondent lenders were the beneficiaries of a long-awaited common sense ruling on when the statute of limitations begins to run under New York law for purposes of a mortgage buyback claim. The...more