The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently held that a lender’s practice of charging late fees when the amount of the payment was insufficient to cover both the scheduled payment and earlier late fees violated Maryland’s Credit Grantor Closed End Credit Provisions (CLEC). However, the Court also held that the lender’s practice of applying payments first to late charges, then to accrued interest, and then to principal, as well as the lender’s internal accounting practices, did not violate CLEC. A copy of the opinion in Williams v. Lendmark Fin. Serv. is available at: Link to Opinion. In 2009,…
Posts published in “CLEC”
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently held that, in order for a borrower to recover under Maryland’s Credit Grantor Closed End Credit Provisions (CLEC), the borrower must have repaid more than the original principal balance of his or her loan. Additionally, the Court held that a motion under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(d)(1)(B) to provide notice to putative class members can (and in most cases should) be denied at the pre-certification stage because ordinarily there was little danger of prejudicing “absent class members” unless there is substantial evidence of “reliance interest” even at that…