The District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Second District, recently held that where loan documents provided that Florida law applied to foreclosure claims, the trial court erred in applying Texas law because the deficiency claim in the case was part of the Florida foreclosure process.
A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that a bank’s relationship with a software services company, under which the software services company required its customers to use the bank for the depositary services ancillary to the software, did not violate anti-tying provisions of the federal Bank Holding Company Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1972.
The District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District ("Second DCA"), recently held that a notice of assignment of a mortgage loan pursuant to the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act ("FCCPA"), § 559.715, Florida Statutes, is not a condition precedent to filing a mortgage foreclosure action, but certified the question to the Florida Supreme Court for resolution as one of great public importance.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently held that a debtor alleged a plausible claim against a mortgage loan servicer under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) based on the servicer’s proof of claim filed after obtaining a foreclosure judgment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held that a mortgagee’s foreclosure action did not violate an automatic stay imposed during one of the plaintiff’s chapter 13 bankruptcy schedules, where the debtor failed to amend his bankruptcy schedules to disclose his recent acquisition of the subject property from his son.
In so ruling, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s judgment in favor of the mortgagee because father and son plaintiffs were judicially estopped from claiming a stay violation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently held that the trial court did not have subject matter jurisdiction based upon diversity over claims which sought a temporary stay of a foreclosure sale pending the review of a loan modification application because the amount of controversy did not exceed $75,000.
In so ruling, the Court held that, for claims which merely seek a temporary stay of a foreclosure sale, the amount in controversy is not the value of the underlying loan.
The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently held that the bankruptcy court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to void the foreclosure of a mortgage lien that was executed by the debtors before bankruptcy, but recorded while the automatic stay was in effect.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently affirmed a bankruptcy court’s ruling that a mortgagee did not violate the discharge injunction in 11 U.S.C. § 524(a) by sending IRS 1099-A forms to borrowers after their discharge, agreeing that the IRS forms were not objectively coercive attempts to collect a debt.
A copy of the opinion in Bates v. CitiMortgage, Inc. is available at: Link to Opinion.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that a lender that is on inquiry notice that its security interest in the collateral had been fraudulently conveyed may lose its secured status.
However, the Court also held that the lender's negligence here did not amount to "purposeful avoidance of the truth" sufficient to justify application of the doctrine of equitable subordination, which allows a bankruptcy court to reduce the priority of a claim in bankruptcy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of a consumer’s Truth in Lending Act (TILA) claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, holding that the claim was barred by the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the federal Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA).
A copy of the opinion in Shaw v. Bank of America is available at: Link to Opinion.