InfoBytes Blog
Filter
Subscribe to our InfoBytes Blog weekly newsletter and other publications for news affecting the financial services industry.
4th Circuit affirms $10 million penalty for appraisal practices
On March 10, a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court’s summary judgment that an appraisal practice common before 2009 was unconscionable under the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act. According to the opinion, a class of borrowers filed a lawsuit against a lender and an appraisal management company, alleging the defendants relayed home value estimates provided by borrowers on their applications to appraisers and allegedly asked appraisers “to take another look” if the appraisal value came in lower than the estimated value. The plaintiffs claimed, among other things, that this practice constituted a breach of contract and unconscionable inducement under West Virginia law. Plaintiffs also filed a civil conspiracy claim against the defendants. The district court conditionally certified the class. It ultimately imposed a $9.6 million statutory penalty and awarded class members the appraisal fees paid as damages for breach of contract in an amount totaling nearly $1 million. However, no damages were awarded for conspiracy. The defendants appealed, arguing that summary judgment was wrongfully granted and that the class should not have been certified since individual issues predominated over common ones.
On appeal, the majority determined, among other things, that the acceptability of the challenged practice “shifted dramatically during the class period,” and that “[w]hat started out as a common (though questionable) practice became one that, in short order, was explicitly forbidden.” The majority determined the plaintiffs established their claim for unconscionable inducement, and that it “was unethical for Defendants to attempt to pressure or influence appraisers.” The majority also affirmed the district court’s ruling on the conspiracy claim. However, the appellate court concluded that the district court improperly granted summary judgment on the breach of contract claim and ordered the district court to reexamine whether breach of contract occurred and whether the plaintiffs suffered resulting damages.
The dissenting judge called the majority opinion “startling,” writing that “[t]his is an unjust punishment indeed for a company that followed a practice that was both customary and legal and only later modified to avoid potentially influencing appraisers.”
9th Circuit: Debt collector can invoke bona fide effort defense in time-barred suit
On March 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of an FDCPA lawsuit, holding that while “strict liability” under the statute applies when a debt collector threatens litigation or files a lawsuit seeking to collect time-barred debt, the debt collector can avoid liability by invoking the bona fide error defense. In the case that gave rise to the plaintiff’s FDCPA claim, the plaintiff contested the debt collector’s state court lawsuit, arguing that it was filed outside the four-year statute of limitations applicable to sale-of-goods contract claims. The debt collector countered that Oregon’s six-year statute of limitations for other contract claims applied. After the state court ruled for the plaintiff, the plaintiff filed a putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon against the defendants alleging violations of Sections 1692e and 1692f of the FDCPA. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss ruling that the plaintiff failed to state a claim because the state statute of limitations was unclear when the defendants attempted to collect the debt.
On appeal, the 9th Circuit disagreed with the district court, concluding that because the “FDCPA takes a strict liability approach to prohibiting misleading and unfair debt collection practices, [] a plaintiff need not plead or prove that a debt collector knew or should have known that the lawsuit was time barred to demonstrate that the debt collector engaged in prohibited conduct.” However, the 9th Circuit held that the defendants may be able to avoid liability through the FDCPA’s affirmative defense for bona fide errors. The appellate court distinguished its holding from a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case, Jerman v. Carlisle, McNellie, Rini, Kramer & Ulrich LPA, which held that mistakes about the FDCPA’s meaning are excluded from the bona fide error defense. Instead, the 9th Circuit found that “a mistake about the time-barred status of a debt under state law could qualify as a bona fide error within the meaning of the FDCPA” because it is a mistake of fact and not of law.
6th Circuit: Delegation clause in arbitration agreement keeps case out of court
On March 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined that a district court “exceeded its authority” when it ruled that an arbitration agreement was unenforceable in a case disputing an allegedly predatory loan. According to the 6th Circuit opinion, the plaintiff claimed she was the victim of an illegal “rent-a-tribe” scheme when she accepted a $1,200 loan with an interest rate exceeding 350 percent from an online lender owned and organized under the laws of a federally recognized Montana tribe. The loan contract the plaintiff signed included a provision stating that “‘any dispute. . .related to this agreement will be resolved through binding arbitration’ under tribal law, subject to review only in tribal court.” The plaintiff filed suit, alleging, among other things, that the arbitration agreement violated Michigan and federal consumer protection laws. The defendant moved to compel arbitration, arguing that because the plaintiff agreed to arbitrate issues regarding “the validity, enforceability, or scope” of the arbitration agreement through a “delegation clause,” the court should stay the case and compel arbitration. The district court denied the defendant’s motion, “maintaining that the enforceability of the arbitration agreement ‘has already been litigated, and decided against [the defendant], in a similar case from the 2nd Circuit.’” The defendant appealed, arguing that the district court disregarded the delegation clause.
On remand, the 6th Circuit stated that its decision does not bear on the merits of the case but merely addresses who resolves the plaintiff’s challenges to the arbitration agreement. “It’s not even about whether the parties have to arbitrate the merits. Instead, it’s about who should decide whether the parties have to arbitrate the merits,” the appellate court wrote. Focusing on the delegation clause—which states that the parties agreed that an arbitrator, and not the court, would decide “gateway arbitrability issues”—the appellate court held that “[o]nly a specific challenge to a delegation clause brings arbitrability issues back within the court's province,” which was a challenge that the plaintiff failed to make.
CFPB appeals ruling vacating mandatory disclosures and 30-day credit linking restriction in Prepaid Accounts Rule
On March 1, the CFPB filed a notice to appeal a December 2020 ruling, in which the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C. vacated two provisions of the Bureau’s Prepaid Account Rule: (i) the short-form disclosure requirement “to the extent it provides mandatory disclosure clauses”; and (ii) the 30-day credit linking restriction. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the court concluded that the Bureau acted outside of its statutory authority by promulgating a short-form disclosure requirement (to the extent it provided for mandatory disclosure clauses). The court noted that it could not “presume—as the Bureau does—that Congress delegated power to the Bureau to issue mandatory disclosure clauses just because Congress did not specifically prohibit them from doing so.” The court further determined that the Bureau also read too much into its general rulemaking authority when it promulgated a mandatory 30-day credit linking restriction under 12 CFR section 1026.61(c)(1)(iii) that limited consumers’ ability to link certain credit cards to their prepaid accounts. The court first determined that neither TILA nor Dodd-Frank vest the Bureau with the authority to promulgate substantive regulations on when consumers can access and use credit linked to prepaid accounts. Second, the court deemed the regulatory provision to be a “substantive regulation banning a consumer’s access to and use of credit” under the disguise of a disclosure, and thus invalid.
Court grants interlocutory appeal in CFPB student loan servicing action
On February 26, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted a student loan servicer’s request for interlocutory appeal as to whether questions concerning the CFPB’s constitutionality stopped the clock on claims that it allegedly misled borrowers. The court’s order pauses a 2017 lawsuit in which the Bureau claimed the servicer violated the CFPA, FCRA, and FDCPA by allegedly creating obstacles for borrower repayment options (covered by InfoBytes here), and grants the servicer’s request to certify a January 13 ruling. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the servicer argued that the Supreme Court’s finding in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB (covered by a Buckley Special Alert—which held that that the director’s for-cause removal provision was unconstitutional but was severable from the statute establishing the CFPB)—meant that the Bureau “never had constitutional authority to bring this action and that the filing of [the] lawsuit was unauthorized and unlawful.” The servicer also claimed that the statute of limitations governing the CFPB’s claims prior to the decision in Seila had expired, arguing that Director Kathy Kraninger’s July 2020 ratification came too late. The court disagreed, ruling, among other things, that “[n]othing in Seila indicates that the Supreme Court intended that its holding should result in a finding that this lawsuit is void ab initio.”
The court’s order sends the ruling to the 3rd Circuit to review “[w]hether an act of ratification, performed after the statute of limitations has expired, is subject to equitable tolling, so as to permit the valid ratification of the original action which was filed within the statute of limitations but which was filed at a time when the structure of the federal agency was unconstitutional and where the legal determination of the presence of the structural defect came after the expiration of the statute of limitations.” Specifically, the court explained that this particular “question does not appear to have been addressed by any court in the United States. . . .Not only is there a lack of conflicting precedent, there is no supporting precedent; indeed, no party has identified any comparable precedent.” Further, “[i]f this court erred in applying the doctrine of equitable tolling, it would almost certainly lead to a reversal on appeal and dismissal of this action,” the court noted.
5th Circuit: Conveying information about a debt collector is different from conveying information about a debt
On February 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a consumer’s FDCPA claims against a collection agency, concluding that “conveying information about a debt collector is not the same as conveying information about a debt.” According to the opinion, the collection agency (defendant) attempted to contact the plaintiff via telephone concerning an unpaid debt. When the plaintiff failed to answer the call, the defendant contacted the plaintiff’s sister and asked to speak to the plaintiff. During the call, a representative working for the defendant provided her own name and that of the collection agency, and provided her number so the plaintiff could return the call. The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the defendant violated FDCPA § 1692c(b) when the representative left a message with the plaintiff’s sister and asked her to have the plaintiff contact the defendant. Under § 1692c(b), a debt collector “‘may not communicate, in connection with the collection of any debt, with any person other than the consumer’ or certain other prescribed parties to the debt ‘without the prior consent of the consumer.’” An exception is provided under § 1692b for a debt collector who communicates with a third party to acquire location information about the consumer. The district court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss, which the plaintiff appealed, arguing that the defendant’s conduct “went beyond the scope of a permissible call for the purposes of obtaining location information.”
On appeal, the 5th Circuit first reviewed whether the call violated Section 1692c(b). The appellate court noted that it was first called to address the “threshold issue” as to “whether the alleged conversation qualifies as a ‘communication’” as defined by the FDCPA. Under § 1692a(2), a “communication” refers to “the conveying of information regarding a debt directly or indirectly to any person through any medium.” In this instance, the appellate court wrote, there was nothing in the call between the defendant and the plaintiff’s sister that conveyed information regarding the existence of a debt. “[T]o indirectly convey information regarding a debt, a conversation or message would need to, at the very least, imply that a debt existed. Knowing the name of a debt collector does not imply the existence of a debt.” The 5th Circuit further concluded, among other things, that “[e]ven if the average consumer recognized the company’s name and identified it as a debt collector, receiving a phone call from a debt collector does not suggest any information about an underlying debt.” As such, the 5th Circuit determined the plaintiff failed to adequately plead facts suggesting a plausible violation of the FDCPA.
Court cites 6th Circuit, rules TCPA covers autodialers using stored lists
On February 25, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia ruled that a satellite TV company cannot avoid class claims that it made unwanted calls to stored numbers using an automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer). The company filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff’s claims that it violated Section 227 of the TCPA when it made illegal automated and prerecorded telemarketing calls to her cellphone using an autodialer. The company argued, among other things, that the “statutory definition of an [autodialer] covers only equipment that can generate numbers randomly or sequentially,” and that “nothing in the complaint plausibly alleges that any of the calls were sent using that type of equipment.” According to the company, list-based dialing cannot be subject to liability under the TCPA. The court disagreed, stating that the TCPA makes it clear that it covers autodialers using stored lists. The court referenced a 6th Circuit decision in Allan v. Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which determined that “the plain text of [§ 227], read in its entirety, makes clear that devices that dial from a stored list of numbers are subject to the autodialer ban.” (Covered by InfoBytes here.) The court also referenced decisions issued by the 2nd, 6th, and 9th Circuits, which all said that the TCPA’s definition of an autodialer includes “autodialers which dial from a stored list of numbers.” However, these appellate decisions conflict with holdings issued by the 3rd, 7th, and 11th Circuits, which have concluded that autodialers require the use of randomly or sequentially generated phone numbers, consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s holding that struck down the FCC’s definition of autodialer in ACA International v. FCC (covered by a Buckley Special Alert). Currently, the specific definition of an autodialer is a question pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in Duguid v. Facebook, Inc. (covered by InfoBytes here). The court further ruled that three out-of-state consumers should be removed from the case as they failed to meet the threshold for personal jurisdiction, and also reiterated that the case could not be arbitrated as the company’s arbitration clause was “unconscionable.”
New York Court of Appeals reverses mortgage foreclosure timeliness claims
On February 18, the New York Court of Appeals reversed appellate division orders in four cases concerning the timeliness of mortgage foreclosure claims, seeking to develop “clarity and consistency” for cases affecting real property ownership. In particular, the decision clarifies questions regarding what actions will constitute acceleration of a debt and how such acceleration can be revoked, or de-accelerated, which resets the foreclosure timeline.
The Court of Appeals first addressed the question about how and when a default letter to a borrower constitutes an acceleration, thus commencing the six-year statute of limitations period for initiating a foreclosure action. With respect to two of the cases (appellants three and four), the Court of Appeals applied the ruling from Albertina Realty Co. v. Rosbro Realty Corp., which held “that a noteholder must effect an ‘unequivocal overt act’ to accomplish such a substantial change in the parties’ contractual relationship.” The Court of Appeals reviewed a default letter sent in one of the cases and agreed with the bank that merely warning a borrower of a potential future foreclosure via a default letter does not count as an “overt, unequivocal act.” “Noteholders should be free to accurately inform borrowers of their default, the steps required for a cure and the practical consequences if the borrower fails to act, without running the risk of being deemed to have taken the drastic step of accelerating the loan,” the Court of Appeals stated. Instead, the letter must be accompanied by some other overt, unequivocal act. In addition, the Court of Appeals also reviewed a portion of the appellate division’s decision in appellant four’s case, which held that the bank “could not de-accelerate because it ‘admitted that its primary reason for revoking acceleration of the mortgage debt was to avoid the statute of limitations bar.’” The Court of Appeals majority wrote, “We reject the theory. . .that a lender should be barred from revoking acceleration if the motive of the revocation was to avoid the expiration of the statute of limitations on the accelerated debt. A noteholder's motivation for exercising a contractual right is generally irrelevant.”
The Court of Appeals also addressed the issue of “whether a valid election to accelerate, effectuated by the commencement of a prior foreclosure action, was revoked upon the noteholder’s voluntary discontinuance of that action” in the two other cases (appellants one and two). According to Court of Appeals, when a noteholder has accelerated a loan by filing a foreclosure action, “voluntary discontinuance” of that foreclosure action de-accelerates the loan unless the noteholder states otherwise. Thus, the noteholder can later choose to re-accelerate the loan and file another foreclosure action with a new six-year statute of limitations period, the Court of Appeals wrote, reversing appellate division orders that had dismissed the two cases as untimely.
While largely unanimous, one judge issued a dissenting opinion on two of the rulings concerning whether the noteholders effectively revoked acceleration. The judge stated that if the court is going to impose a deceleration rule based on a noteholder’s voluntary withdrawal of a foreclosure action, she would require that noteholders “provide express notice to the borrower regarding the effect of that withdrawal.”
9th Circuit: Arbitration agreement authorizes public injunctive relief under California law
On February 19, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a grant of a motion to compel arbitration filed by the operator of a smartphone app that offers financial services to consumers, holding that an agreement between a consumer and the lender authorizes the arbitrator to award all injunctive remedies available in an individual lawsuit under California law. In this case, the plaintiff took out a credit-builder loan and was required to enroll in a program offered by the lender as a prerequisite for applying for the loan, which required the payment of monthly fees. After the consumer fell behind on her fees, deposits, and loan payments, she filed a putative class action suit claiming that when she tried to cancel her membership in the program, the lender informed her that she first had to pay off the loan in full, which could only happen after she paid the still-accumulating past-due membership fees. The lender moved to compel arbitration, which the district court granted, ruling that the arbitration agreement was fully enforceable and that the agreement “explicitly” did not violate the ruling established in McGill v. Citibank NA, as it allowed the arbitrator to award “all remedies in an individual lawsuit,” including, without limitation, public injunctive relief. On appeal, the 9th Circuit rejected the consumer’s argument that she could only secure public injunctive relief by acting as a private attorney general, which the arbitration agreement explicitly prohibited. “Public injunctive relief is available under California law in individual lawsuits—not just in private-attorney-general suits,” the appellate court wrote. “It follows that [the consumer] may secure that relief in arbitration under the [a]greement.” As a result, the court affirmed the district court’s order to compel arbitration.
Court holds satellite provider not liable for telemarketer’s calls
On February 12, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted summary judgment in favor of a satellite TV company as to a class action’s TCPA claims, concluding that the company was not liable for its telemarketing service provider’s cold calls. As previously covered by InfoBytes, a consumer filed a class action against the company alleging that the company failed to maintain an “internal do-not-call list,” which allowed the company and its telemarketing service provider to contact him eighteen times after he repeatedly asked to not be contacted. The consumer sought certification “of all persons who received more than one telemarketing call from [the telemarketing service provider] on behalf of [the company] while it failed to maintain an internal do-not-call list.” The district court certified two representative classes: the Internal Do Not Call (IDNC) class and the National Do Not Call (NDNC) class. The company appealed the IDNC class and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s certification of the IDNC class. The company then moved for summary judgment on the certified NDNC class claims and plaintiff’s individual IDNC claim.
Upon review, the court granted summary judgment in favor of the company concluding that there was no evidence that (i) the cold calls were made by the telemarketing provider within its actual authority from the company; (ii) the company made representations sufficient to give the telemarketing provider the apparent authority to make the cold calls; or (iii) the company ever ratified the cold calls. Specifically, the court noted that not only did the company “categorically ban[] all residential and cellular cold calls,” it also “regularly issued reminders that [the telemarketing provider] was required to continue implementation of national-do-not-call procedures in compliance with the TCPA.”