- Presumed-reliance (“fraud on the market”) theories, which SCOTUS is likely to reconsider in Halliburton, aren’t just confined to securities litigation, but crop up in various other areas of litigation including third-party payer drug suits [Beck, Drug and Device Law; more background]
- Why restrict alienability?, pt. CLXXI: Neil Sobol, “Protecting Consumers from Zombie-Debt Collectors” [NMLR/SSRN]
- Will Congress step in to curtail fad for eminent domain municipal seizure of mortgages? [Kevin Funnell, earlier here and here]
- More commentary on J.P. Morgan settlement [Daniel Fisher, Michael Greve, earlier here, here, and here]
- Judge Jed Rakoff: Why have no high level execs been prosecuted over financial crisis? [Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog]
- Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) turns its sights to investment advisers. The logic being…? [Louise Bennetts, Cato/PJ Media]
- Property-casualty insurer association challenges new HUD disparate-impact rules [Cook County Record]
Posts Tagged ‘mortgages’
“We wouldn’t file a complaint against someone who doesn’t have liability”
A group called the National Fair Housing Alliance has taken the lead in levying sensational bias charges against mortgage lenders, claiming that neglect of REO (real-estate-owned) properties following foreclosure has followed racially discriminatory patterns. It helped negotiate the extraction of $42 million from Wells Fargo, and is pursuing tens of millions in claims against Bank of America and other lenders. NFHA’s claims have routinely been given unskeptical circulation in the press, but now an investigation by Kate Berry and Jeff Horwitz in the American Banker is bringing overdue scrutiny:
The group has disclosed addresses for only a fraction of the properties it alleges the banks have neglected, but a review of those it has released indicates that NFHA regularly misidentified the institution legally responsible for maintaining specific homes. In some cases, it conflated the banks responsible for maintaining properties with those that were simply serving as trustees for mortgage-bond investors. In others, it faulted banks for damage that occurred before they took possession of properties.
Not in dispute is the leverage the NFHA has gained in its dealings with banks from its close ties to supporters in the federal government. Unusual among Washington agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development both funds housing discrimination investigations by nonprofits, including by the NFHA, and provides the venue for them to negotiate their claims.
Grants from HUD and Fannie Mae helped get the NFHA and its leader, Shanna Smith, into the profitable business of investigations in the first place. Banks complain without success about Smith’s practice of demanding a deal while withholding the actual identities and addresses of the properties said to be suffering from bank neglect. Now the HUD-brokered Wells Fargo settlement has paid off richly with $30 million+ for the NFHA and its affiliates, the better with which to stir up more complaints. And watch the revolving door spin, amid few qualms arising from conflicts of interest: “Sara Pratt, the HUD official responsible for investigating and resolving the NFHA’s complaints, and who oversaw its settlement with Wells Fargo, is a former NFHA staffer and consultant.” (cross-posted at Cato at Liberty).
Banking and finance roundup
- J.P. Morgan and the Dodd-Frank system: “With Wall Street’s capable assistance, government has managed to institutionalize and monetize the perp walk.” [Michael Greve, related from Greve on the self-financing regulatory state]
- Harvard needs to worry about being seen as endorsing its affiliated Shareholder Rights Project [Richard Painter]
- Under regulatory pressure, J.P. Morgan “looking to pull back from lending to politically incorrect operations like pawn shops, payday lenders, check cashers” [Seeking Alpha]
- Rare securities class action goes to trial against Household lending firm, HSBC; $2.46 billion judgment [Reuters]
- Car dealers only thought they were winning a Dodd-Frank exemption from CFPB. Surprise! [Carter Dougherty/Bloomberg, Funnell]
- “Memo to the Swiss: Capping CEO Pay is not an Intelligent Way of dealing with Income Inequality” [Bainbridge]
- American Bankers Association vs. blogger who compiled online list of banks’ routing numbers [Popehat]
Banking and finance roundup
- “Dodd-Frank and The Regulatory Burden on Smaller Banks” [Todd Zywicki]
- Side-stepping Morrison: way found for foreign-cubed claims to get into federal court? [D&O Diary]
- “Alice in Wonderland Has Nothing on Section 518 of the New York General Business Law” [Eugene Volokh, swipe fees]
- “Financial Reform in 12 Minutes” [John Cochrane]
- Why the state-owned Bank of North Dakota isn’t a model for much of anything [Mark Calabria, New York Times “Room for Debate”]
- Regulated lenders have many reasons to watch SCOTUS’s upcoming Mount Holly case on housing disparate impact [Kevin Funnell]
- Cert petition: “Time to undo fraud-on-the-market presumption in securities class actions?” [Alison Frankel]
Maryland roundup
- You might as well live: estate and inheritance tax make it highly inadvisable to die as a Maryland resident [TaxProf]
- “Foreclosures: The Chickens Come Home to Roost” [Calvert Institute, earlier]
- Courts task force created earlier this year will study costly and open-ended Civil Gideon proposals [courts]
- For your own good: state’s commissioner of financial regulation goes after banks that service payday lenders [Funnell]
- Governor candidates angle for union support, bids include “greater use of collective bargaining agreements on state construction projects” [WaPo]
- Really, it won’t kill you to respect people’s consciences on Frederick County boards and commissions [Bethany Rodgers, Frederick News Post on Pledge of Allegiance controversy, update, Ken at Popehat (“Freedom of conscience is like the good couch in the living room; it’s there to be had, not to be used.”), Gene Healy background] About time: city may ease restrictions on bed and breakfasts [Jen Bondeson, Frederick News Post]
- Only a handful of states join Maryland in policy of unionizing home child carers [Go Local Providence, more]
Banking and finance roundup
- “You can’t prove that favoritism influenced FDIC” in going easy on brass at Chicago bank [Kevin Funnell]
- Securities and Exchange Commission won’t give up bid for more power in stale cases despite 9-0 SCOTUS loss [my new Cato Institute]
- Is JP Morgan paying an enforcement price for Dimon’s outspoken criticism of regulators? [Prof. Bainbridge; WSJ (reporting claims that “it took Mr. Dimon too long to shed a combative stance with regulators… In April the bank’s two top regulators told Mr. Dimon and his board that they had lost trust in management.”)] More on Standard & Poor’s claims that it was targeted for retaliation by federal government [Peter Henning, NYT DealBook, earlier]
- Judge rules against law passed by Chicago on bank-owned vacant buildings [Chicago Real Estate Daily]
- Post-merger derivative claims: “Delaware refuses to feed the sharks” [Bainbridge]
- Payday lending fight pits New York regulator against some Indian tribes [Funnell, Native American Financial Service Association]
- Stay on the line to learn more about the Verizon/Vodafone deal, or just press the star key to sue now [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
…and the right to collect legal fees
The Washington Post splashes an investigative story about the tax lien business, in which outsiders buy up delinquent municipal property tax liens sometimes amounting to mere hundreds of dollars, then roll in lawyers’ fees and costs that can push up the bill into many thousands, eventuating in the foreclosure of family homes. The narrative is less than clear about exactly how the process works, and even leaves the impression that a tax lien purchaser owed, say, $6,000 can walk away with all the proceeds from the foreclosure of a $197,000 house without having to hand any of it over to mortgage holders, let alone the original owner. And some of the solutions offered (let’s not allow lien foreclosures on elderly people!) would have unintended consequences that are also, to be polite, underexplained. Still, enough of the story is there that an important general principle comes through: it’s dangerous for the law to put opportunistic actors in a position to run up $450/hour legal fees pursuing adversarial process that might not actually have been needed to vindicate their interests.
Banking and finance roundup
- With arbitrary power to order capital levels, FDIC is Death Star to community banking [Kevin Funnell]
- “Oh please. We’re not going too easy on [convicted inside trader] Raj Rajaratnam.” [John Carney]
- “Ronald Coase and the nature of shadow banking” [also John Carney]
- “Say-on-pay” as “lawyer-driven” litigation [Pepper Hamilton via Bainbridge]
- I’m a guest on Jim Puplava’s “Financial Sense” podcast [link]
- Wall Street, housing lobby to get their way again: “I’m afraid that the fix is in on housing finance reform.” [Arnold Kling]
- Channeling Bernie Sanders? Thumbsucker on decline of IBM as employer fingers shareholder value theory promoted by ever-so-wicked Chicago school [Washington Post]
- Wells Fargo gets a lending-discrimination class action tossed, but there’ll be others where it came from [Andrew Trask]
Colorado foreclosure uproar could go national
“At the risk of losing their homes if they didn’t, scores of Colorado homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosure in the past year were each forced to pay hundreds of dollars in lawyer charges for phantom court cases against them, a Denver Post investigation has found.” In 126 of the episodes, the paper reports, no foreclosure lawsuit was actually filed. Related reporting on allegations against Colorado foreclosure law firms here, here, etc.
Along with the Colorado attorney general, various other law enforcers both state and federal are scrutinizing the billing practices of creditors’ law firms looking for evidence that they’ve been evading the fee and cost reimbursement limits for foreclosures that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA prescribe on loans they own, guarantee or insure. [Paul Jackson, Housing Wire via Funnell]
Here’s why: it turns out that many of the major law firms responsible for managing foreclosures for the GSEs also have a controlling interest in the ancillary service firms that generate the variable fees that appear as “costs” on the lawyer’s bill. Many law firms either outright own, or their partners have a significant interest in, the company that is posting and publishing notices; or they may own or have an interest in the company that manages process of service, as well.
Such arrangements are not illegal, but could land the firms and mortgage servicers in hot water if it develops that they have connived at fee padding by the ancillary firms. (& welcome Above the Law readers). More: Heather Draper, Denver Business Journal (and thanks for quote).
Scheme to seize underwater mortgages
Inspired in part by the work of Cornell law professor Robert Hockett, the city of Richmond, Calif. is planning to 1) use eminent domain to seize private mortgages for considerably less than their actual worth; 2) cut a deal with existing residents of the homes to install FHA mortgages in place of the seized mortgages; 3) use the windfall surplus — derived by paying the private mortgage holders less than the actual value of their forcibly seized holdings — to subsidize the local residents, thus buying their political favor, as well as leaving a goodly sum to pay off the private outfit called Mortgage Resolution Partners that’s pushing the scheme (written up sympathetically in a recent New York Times account).
What could go wrong, aside from to the spirit of the Constitution and the rule of law? Gideon Kanner points out that even California eminent domain law still requires the payment of “fair market value, not some bargain basement figure pulled out of thin air”:
…we believe that not even California courts will stand still for that. Why not? Because under our law, if the condemnor tries to lowball too much, and makes an unreasonable pre-trial offer, it may have to pay the condemnees’ attorneys’ and appraiser’s fees, plus other litigation expenses, on top of the “just compensation” required by the constitutions. And, of course, any diminution in value brought about by the the market’s reaction to the imminence of the condemnation, cannot be considered in determining fair market value. The property has to be valued as if unaffected by the condemnor’s plans or by any preliminary steps taken toward the condemnation. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. Sec. 1263.330.
For other reasons the scheme may prove much more expensive to the city of Richmond and its taxpayers, see Ilya Somin [more, yet more] Other commentary: Matt Welch, Richard Epstein. Earlier here, here, etc.