The Florida District Court of Appeal of the Third District recently reversed the dismissal of a mortgagor’s second amended complaint alleging that the mortgagee’s post-default estoppel letter inflated the amount of legal fees it was entitled to recover. In so ruling, the Appellate Court held that the requirements under Fla. Stat. 701.40 for a mortgagee to deliver a written estoppel letter providing the unpaid balance of the loan and any other charges properly due upon a mortgagor’s request can give rise to a valid cause of action based on the parties’ respective obligations under the statute. A copy of the…
Posts published in June 2019
The Supreme Court of California recently held that the anti-deficiency statute in California Code of Civil Procedure § 580d did not bar a creditor holding two deeds of trust on the same property from recovering a deficiency judgment on the junior lien extinguished by a non-judicial foreclosure sale on the senior lien. A copy of the opinion in Black Sky Capital, LLC v. Cobb is available at: Link to Opinion. The bank extended two loans to the borrowers that were secured by deeds of trust on a commercial property. The bank sold both loans to an investor that subsequently foreclosed on the…
On April 30, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed into law Substitute House Bill 1531 which places new requirements on medical debt collectors. The new provisions go into effect July 28, 2019. The new law requires medical debt collectors to inform consumers in the initial written communication of the right to request the original account number, date of last payment and an itemized statement regarding the debt. For hospital debt, the communication must also notify consumers they “may be eligible for charity care from the hospital, together with the contact information for the hospital.” Upon an oral or written request for…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently affirmed a mortgage foreclosure judgment, holding that the district court properly admitted into evidence a computer printout from the loan servicer containing incorporated information from prior loan servicers. A copy of the opinion in U.S. Bank Trust, N.A. v. Jones is available at: Link to Opinion. The plaintiff borrower defaulted on her mortgage loan and the bank filed a diversity action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. “At trial, [the bank] sought to establish the total amount owed on the loan account by introducing a computer…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently upheld the dismissal of an alleged data breach victim’s allegations under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act, and the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, as well as various common law claims. A copy of the opinion in Melissa Alleruzzo v. SuperValu, Inc. is available at: Link to Opinion. In June and July 2014, hundreds of retail grocery stores operated by three different entities (“grocers”) were hacked, resulting in the theft of customers’ card information, including their names, credit or debit card account…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a borrower’s claim, holding that a mortgage servicer’s motion to reschedule a previously set foreclosure sale after it approved the borrower for a trial loan modification plan did not violate the federal Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act because the motion to reschedule did not move for an order of sale. A copy of the decision in Landau v. RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corp. is available at: Link to Opinion. A borrower defaulted on her mortgage loan and her lender filed a foreclosure action. The lender obtained final summary judgment in…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed a trial court’s ruling that a debtor lacked Article III standing to sue a debt collector for failing to notify her in its debt validation letter that to trigger the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act’s protections she had to communicate a dispute in writing because the only harm she suffered was receiving the incomplete letter. In so ruling, the Seventh Circuit created a circuit split on this issue as in Macy v. GC Services Limited Partnership, 897 F.3d 747 (6th Cir. 2018), where the Sixth Circuit held under…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently affirmed two trial court rulings in favor of a debt collector and against the debtors holding that correspondence which identified “the name of the creditor to whom the debt is owed” as the original creditor instead of the current creditor did not violate the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because it accurately disclosed the only creditor to whom the debtors owed their debt sufficient for the unsophisticated consumer to understand. A copy of the opinion in Smith v. Simm Associates, Inc. is available at: Link to Opinion. In both cases, a…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently affirmed entry of summary judgment in favor of a prominent media and information firm against a job seeker’s claims that it furnished false information in a purported “consumer report” obtained by a prospective employer in alleged violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In so ruling, the Court concluded that the media company was not a “consumer reporting agency,” because it did not intend to furnish “consumer reports” through its services, and thus was not subject to the FCRA, 15 U.S.C. § 1681, et seq. A copy of the opinion…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held recently that plaintiffs failed to offer sufficient evidence to create a genuine dispute of fact as to their accounting and fraudulent concealment claims against a bank based on the disappearance of funds from a savings account that was closed 12 years before the lawsuit was filed. Specifically, the Circuit Court determined that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate the existence of a fiduciary relationship as required for their accounting claim, and they did not establish the detrimental reliance element of their fraudulent concealment claim. Accordingly, the Circuit Court affirmed the trial…
In an unpublished ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently affirmed dismissal of a borrower’s putative class action suit filed against a mortgagee alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act for failing to conduct a reasonable investigation into disputed information reported to the credit reporting agencies. In so ruling, the Court concluded that the borrower failed to demonstrate that a reasonable investigation would have uncovered an inaccuracy in certain information provided by the mortgagee to the credit reporting agencies, and the mortgagee had no duty to investigate a separate dispute because the borrower did not…