Financial Services

CCP 580d does not bar a creditor from suing a borrower to collect on a note secured by a junior lien that was extinguished by a non-judicial foreclosure of a senior lien, even if the creditor also held the senior lien on which it non-judicially foreclosed.  Read More

An entity that collects debts that it has purchased for its own account is not a “debt collector” for FDCPA purposes, since it is collecting on the debts for itself and not for another.  Read More

Reporting to a credit agency on the deliquency or overdue status of a debt is not a per se violation of the automatic stay, which only forbids collection on the debt, not reports about it.  Read More

Trial court properly found defendants liable under the unfair competition law in view of their fraudulent scheme to acquire semi-abandoned properties through a combination of adverse possession and the recordation of wild deeds.  Read More

Neither the statute of limitations nor a release barred borrower’s recovery for usurious interest charged in a series of roll-over notes and forbearance agreements.  Read More

Filing a facially time-barred creditor’s claim in a Chapter 13 is not a false, deceptive, misleading, unconscionable or unfair means of collecting a debt under the FCDPA, since Chapter 13 debtors are protected from paying dubious claims by the Chapter 13 trustee's supervision of the case.  Read More

An Anti-SLAPP motion was properly granted against suit alleging that creditor violated state and federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Acts by recording an abstract of judgment creditor had obtained against plaintiff’s former domestic partner.  Read More

A loan servicer violates Civil Code section 2923.6 by sending the borrower a loan modification denial letter erroneously stating that the borrower has only 15 days to appeal the denial.  Read More

Plaintiff city sufficiently alleged standing to sue by averring that defendant banks' lending to African-Americans and Latinos on less favorable terms than white Anglos led to a tide of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods, lowering property values and thus the city's tax revenues while also requiring greater expenditures by the city to police and maintain the gutted neighborhoods; but further consideration… Read More

A creditor seeking to void a transfer under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act loses if the transferee proves that it gave reasonably equivalent value for the transfer and lacked fraudulent intent and actual, not constructive, knowledge of the transferor’s fraudulent intent.  Read More

If a junior lien securing a non-recourse debt is wiped out by a senior creditor’s foreclosure sale before the debtor files a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, the sold-out junior lienholder is not entitled to a recourse claim against the Chapter 11 bankruptcy estate.  Read More

Under 28 USC § 3304(a), the federal government may void as fraudulent any transfer made by a debtor who does not receive equivalent value, and a judgment debtor’s disclaimer of an inheritance fits that definition.  Read More

Borrowers’ Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claims arising from non-judicial foreclosure actions were properly dismissed, except for claim under 15 USC § 1692f(6) for threatening foreclosure when no right to foreclose existed.  Read More

A home loan borrower could survive summary judgment on her claims for breach of contract and violation of the unfair competition law based on deceptive processing and denial of the borrower's loan modification applications, since servicer should have known from the beginning that borrower’s loan exceeded eligibility guidelines yet reviewed her three times anyway.  Read More

Successive suits by mortgage borrower based on breach of contract and the Truth in Lending Act are not barred by the merger-and-bar aspect of res judicata, since the primary right sued upon is different—TILA protects a right of disclosure of key loan terms, whereas contract law protects the parties' agreement.  Read More

A purchaser at a foreclosure sale need not perfect its title in the property by recording a trustee's deed upon sale before serving the occupant(s) with a notice to quit, so long as title is perfected before the ensuing unlawful detainer action is filed and served.  Read More

A factoring agreement under which an agricultural products distributor sells its accounts receivable to a factor at a discount is not a breach of the distributor’s fiduciary duties to growers, so the factor is not liable for the distributor’s debts to growers.  Read More

Without establishing the accrual date of claims for payment of old credit card debt, defendant could not prove the limitations period had expired and so was not entitled to summary judgment.  Read More

A declaratory relief claim based on equitable subrogation in a priority dispute between two home equity lines of credit is not governed by a three-year limitations period and so was wrongly dismissed.  Read More

Home loan borrower failed to allege viable claims for fraud, violation of the UCL or Rosenthal Act, or wrongful foreclosure based on alleged late transfer of loan to a securitized trust or flaws in the nonjudicial foreclosure process.  Read More