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News, Publications & Events

Andrew W. Noble will present at the March 15, 2018, meeting of the California Bar Association’s Consumer Financial Services Committee on recent changes to California Homeowner Bill of Rights (HBOR). The HBOR statutes in effect since 2012 sunset on January 1, 2018, but were immediately replaced by a parallel set of statutes that, in some key ways, alter a mortgage… Read More

View the SW Winter 2018 Newsletter Since its founding over 70 years ago, Severson & Werson has gained a reputation for providing specialized advice, legal services and expertise to financial institution clients. The services we provide run the gamut, from litigation to regulatory matters, legislative affairs and formulating and implementing national strategies for such things as defending consumer class action… Read More

The Ninth Circuit recently determined, in Pinnacle Rest. at Big Sky, LLC v. CH SP Acquisitions, LLC (In re Spanish Peaks Holdings II, LLC), 862 F.3d 1148 (9th Cir. 2017), that a sale of real property free and clear of liens and interests under Section 363(f) of the United States Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 363(f) (“Section 363(f)”), can terminate… Read More

In what should end a long-simmering legal brushfire, the Ninth Circuit held that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (“FHFA”) so-called “Federal Foreclosure Bar” preempts Nevada’s homeowners' association lien super-priority statute, thereby protecting Fannie/Freddie mortgage liens from being extinguished through foreclosure of later-recorded homeowners association liens. Berezovsky v. Moniz, et al., 869 F.3d 923 (9th Cir. 2017). Berezovsky purchased a home… Read More

On July 5, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to Provident Savings Bank, FSB (“Provident”) in a class action suit brought against Provident by mortgage underwriters who sued for overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq. The Ninth Circuit agreed with plaintiffs that they had been misclassified by… Read More

With the recently alleged data breach of Equifax, the data security of financial institutions’ customer information is once again in the news.  And once again, as with every data breach, a flurry of lawsuits has followed.  The purpose of this article is to highlight one area of legal exposure with data breaches that applies only to financial institutions. Section 6285… Read More

“Resistance” is now the battle cry of the self-anointed defenders of consumer rights.  But this is nothing new for the California Supreme Court, which for over 20 years has resisted the mandate in the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) to enforce arbitration agreements despite their collateral effect on class actions.  Beginning with Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1 (1984), and reaching… Read More

Joel L. Halverson will be presenting "Leveling the Playing Field - Contract Negotiation Strategies for Design Professionals" on Thursday, February 15, 2018. We are currently experiencing a “seller’s market” in which owners and developers are finding it to be a challenge to find good help. Construction professionals can take advantage of this economic climate to secure important contractual protections we… Read More

Rebecca Saelao and Megan Kelly from Severson’s San Francisco office and Scott Hyman and Rochelle Smith from Severson’s Orange County office attended the American Bar Association’s Consumer Financial Services Committee’s Winter Conference from January 6-9, 2018 in Park City, Utah. On January 7th, the Committee honored the passing of the Firm’s founder, James Werson, in 2017. Orange County Member-in-Charge, Scott… Read More

In this Article, Severson partners Rebecca Saelao and Scott Hyman discuss the effect of a class action plaintiff’s dismissal of claims or damages at the instruction of class counsel in order to conform their individual claim to the claims of the putative class and, purportedly, to better their chances for class certification. 2017 Claim Trimming Article Read More

Some design-professionals regularly secure limitations of liability to their own great benefit as well as that of their insurers. Some despair that it is impossible and almost never try to establish any limits or boundaries. The very good news is that limitations of liability are real and valuable. More importantly, there are many roads to limiting liability beyond a generic… Read More

On November 3, 2017, Scott Hyman participated on a panel with a number of other distinguished lawyers from industry and the consumer bar about current class action and regulatory developments in Telephone Consumer Protection Act litigation. Mr. Hyman is a member of the Governing Committee for the Conference on Consumer Finance Law, and the TCPA panel is part of the… Read More

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