InfoBytes Blog
Ohio Supreme Court Holds Registered Mortgage Loan Act Lenders May Make Single-Installment Loans
On June 11, the Ohio Supreme Court held that single-installment, interest bearing loans are permitted under the Mortgage Loan Act (MLA), and that the Short-Term Lender Act (STLA) does not prohibit registered MLA lenders from making such loans. Ohio Neighborhood Finance, Inc. v. Scott, 2013-0103, 2014 WL 2609830 (Ohio Jun. 11, 2014). In this case, an MLA-registered lender sued a borrower seeking to recover the unpaid principal balance on a single-installment loan, as well as interest and fees. The appellate court held that the MLA does not authorize payday-like single-installment loans and that, by enacting the STLA, the General Assembly intended to prohibit all loans of short duration outside the confines of the STLA. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed, holding that the MLA’s definition of “interest-bearing loan” does not require that such loans be multiple installment loans, and that here the loan agreement expressed the debt as the principal amount, and the interest was computed based upon the principal balance outstanding daily, in compliance with the MLA. The court also held that, although the STLA would not permit the loan at issue here because its terms would violate the STLA’s restrictions on the loan term, interest, and fees, the lender was not registered under the STLA, and nothing in the STLA limits the authority of MLA registrants to make loans permitted by the MLA.