The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement agreement with Washington Trust Company, of Westerly (WTC) to resolve claims that WTC redlined majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Rhode Island....more
The Justice Department (DOJ) recently announced a settlement with ESSA Bank & Trust (ESSA), which has agreed to pay over $3 million to resolve allegations that it engaged in a pattern or practice of redlining in violation of...more
The conduit market does not absorb a lot of bandwidth in my day-to-day practice; I’m more of a CRE/CLO/warehouse/SASB/new products/innovation sort of guy. But it’s painful to watch this marquee capital markets product wither...more
Ohio- RESPA Actual Damages- Miller v. Bank of New York Mellon, 6th Cir. No. 21-1126, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 35755 (Dec. 1, 2021) In this appeal, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the borrower’s...more
In Reinig v. RBS Citizens, N.A., a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a district court’s decision certifying a class of mortgage loan officers (“MLOs”) who claimed they were...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a recent decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked a Pennsylvania district court’s skeletal analysis of plaintiffs’ class action claims. Particularly, the court took issue with the district...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit chose to side with the Second Circuit, and not the Sixth Circuit, to opine that mortgage underwriters fail to meet the FLSA’s administrative exemption from overtime...more
On May 26, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it had entered into a consent order with a former loan officer of a national bank, whom the CFPB alleges increased the number of loans he sold by...more
Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced the issuance of a consent decree with a former mortgage loan officer arising out of alleged violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act’s...more
The financial services area received a defeat earlier this year when the United States Supreme Court in March upheld the Department of Labor's (DOL) Administrative Interpretation concluding that mortgage loan officers do not...more
In a marked departure from the overwhelming success employers experienced before the Supreme Court in recent years, the less successful recently wrapped 2014-2015 term could be an indication that the judicial tides may be...more
On April 29, 2015, the CFPB, in conjunction with the Maryland Attorney General, filed six proposed consent orders—five of which are against individual defendants—in its latest RESPA enforcement action. The Bureau alleges that...more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Ass’n invalidated a significant line of D.C. Circuit case law known, after the leading case, as the Paralyzed Veterans doctrine. A case involving a series...more
We know that many of you are aware of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association. The Court held that the U.S. Department of Labor was not required to follow notice and comment procedures in...more
For the past several years, an action by the Mortgage Bankers Association has been brewing in the courts challenging the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) for issuing contradictory opinion letters on whether mortgage loan...more
The Supreme Court recently rejected a challenge to the validity of a 2010 interpretation by the U.S. Department of Labor (the “DOL”), which had concluded that the administrative exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act...more
When federal agencies change their interpretive rules, they are exempt from the formal notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), says the Supreme Court in its recent ruling in...more
Federal agencies now have the authority to interpret their own rules. On March 9, 2015, in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Ass’n, No. 13-1041, slip op. (U.S. Mar. 9, 2015), the United States Supreme Court effectively gave...more
In a March 9, 2015, decision in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Ass'n., the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that an interpretative rule issued by an administrative agency does not require notice and opportunity for comment,...more
In 2004, the DOL revamped its regulations regarding the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) administrative exemption. In 2006, the Bush DOL issued an opinion letter finding that mortgage loan officers qualified for the...more
The U.S. Supreme Court decided in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association that federal agencies are not required to use the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) notice and comment procedures when issuing or making changes to...more
The legal ping-pong match between the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) over whether mortgage loan officers are eligible for overtime appears to be at an end. The Supreme Court recently...more
On March 9, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that when a federal administrative agency wants to amend or repeal an “interpretive rule,” it does not have to follow the notice-and-comment procedures set forth in the...more
On March 9, 2015, the Supreme Court wiped away a longstanding judicial doctrine that had placed greater procedural requirements on a federal agency when it changes its prior interpretation of a federal regulation....more
On March 9, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court held that a federal agency is not required to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking when it issues an interpretation of a regulation that is significantly different from its prior...more