Financial Services

Filing a facially time-barred creditor’s claim in a Chapter 13 is not a false, deceptive, misleading, unconscionable or unfair means of collecting a debt under the FCDPA, since Chapter 13 debtors are protected from paying dubious claims by the Chapter 13 trustee's supervision of the case.  Read More

An Anti-SLAPP motion was properly granted against suit alleging that creditor violated state and federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Acts by recording an abstract of judgment creditor had obtained against plaintiff’s former domestic partner.  Read More

A loan servicer violates Civil Code section 2923.6 by sending the borrower a loan modification denial letter erroneously stating that the borrower has only 15 days to appeal the denial.  Read More

Plaintiff city sufficiently alleged standing to sue by averring that defendant banks' lending to African-Americans and Latinos on less favorable terms than white Anglos led to a tide of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods, lowering property values and thus the city's tax revenues while also requiring greater expenditures by the city to police and maintain the gutted neighborhoods; but further consideration… Read More

A creditor seeking to void a transfer under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act loses if the transferee proves that it gave reasonably equivalent value for the transfer and lacked fraudulent intent and actual, not constructive, knowledge of the transferor’s fraudulent intent.  Read More

If a junior lien securing a non-recourse debt is wiped out by a senior creditor’s foreclosure sale before the debtor files a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, the sold-out junior lienholder is not entitled to a recourse claim against the Chapter 11 bankruptcy estate.  Read More

Under 28 USC § 3304(a), the federal government may void as fraudulent any transfer made by a debtor who does not receive equivalent value, and a judgment debtor’s disclaimer of an inheritance fits that definition.  Read More

Borrowers’ Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claims arising from non-judicial foreclosure actions were properly dismissed, except for claim under 15 USC § 1692f(6) for threatening foreclosure when no right to foreclose existed.  Read More

A home loan borrower could survive summary judgment on her claims for breach of contract and violation of the unfair competition law based on deceptive processing and denial of the borrower's loan modification applications, since servicer should have known from the beginning that borrower’s loan exceeded eligibility guidelines yet reviewed her three times anyway.  Read More

Successive suits by mortgage borrower based on breach of contract and the Truth in Lending Act are not barred by the merger-and-bar aspect of res judicata, since the primary right sued upon is different—TILA protects a right of disclosure of key loan terms, whereas contract law protects the parties' agreement.  Read More

A purchaser at a foreclosure sale need not perfect its title in the property by recording a trustee's deed upon sale before serving the occupant(s) with a notice to quit, so long as title is perfected before the ensuing unlawful detainer action is filed and served.  Read More

A factoring agreement under which an agricultural products distributor sells its accounts receivable to a factor at a discount is not a breach of the distributor’s fiduciary duties to growers, so the factor is not liable for the distributor’s debts to growers.  Read More

Without establishing the accrual date of claims for payment of old credit card debt, defendant could not prove the limitations period had expired and so was not entitled to summary judgment.  Read More

A declaratory relief claim based on equitable subrogation in a priority dispute between two home equity lines of credit is not governed by a three-year limitations period and so was wrongly dismissed.  Read More

Home loan borrower failed to allege viable claims for fraud, violation of the UCL or Rosenthal Act, or wrongful foreclosure based on alleged late transfer of loan to a securitized trust or flaws in the nonjudicial foreclosure process.  Read More

Plaintiff had standing to sue under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, but not the UCL for unwanted text messages soliciting him to renew a gym membership, but the claims were properly dismissed because plaintiff expressly consented to receive the messages by giving his phone number to the gym, and merely allowing his gym membership to lapse did not revoke that… Read More

District court abused its discretion by approving a class action settlement which provided no actual benefit to class members in exchange for release of their FDCPA claims.  Read More

The dismissal of a borrower’s fourth foreclosure delay lawsuit is affirmed based on res judicata and a lack of merit in the borrower’s securitization arguments.  Read More

Prospective employer violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by including a release of claims in the same document as the statutorily required notice that it might obtain a credit report on the applicant for employment purposes.  Read More

General legislation covers Indian tribes unless they are expressly excluded, so the Dodd-Frank Act is interpreted to regulate for-profit consumer lending enterprises of Indian tribes.  Read More