Archive

In a recent case the Third Circuit (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virgin Islands)held that a discrimination lawsuit cannot be certified as a class action based solely on lender pricing discretion. Rodriguez v. National City Bank, 726 F.3d 372 (3d Cir. 2013). The plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit against National City Bank alleging that its policy of providing pricing discretion to loan officers had a disparate impact on minority applicants because a larger percentage of […]

The Dodd-Frank Act has made substantial changes to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Now it appears that the regulation writing process is in high gear. Recently Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), announced his agency is convening a Small Business Review Panel, as required by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (SBREFA). The convening of a SBREFA panel is a preliminary step in the process of releasing […]

I wanted to do a quick 2014 recap because it was brought to our attention that the blog email notifications were disabled.  If you are registered for our blog you might have missed some articles so I included links to all of them below.  I apologize for this inconvenience.  The notifications are now working properly so you can be sure you will receive an email instantly where there’s a new article published if you are […]

The Sixth Circuit dismissed an Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) lawsuit because the plaintiffs failed to make a case that the creditor denied their request for a loan restructuring for a discriminatory reason. 16630 Southfield Ltd. Partnership v. Flagstar Bank, F.S.B., 727 F.3d 502 (6th Cir. 2013). The plaintiffs, one of whom was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iraq, obtained a loan for a real estate venture. The loan was later restructured when the plaintiffs […]

The Fourth Quarter 2013 issue of Consumer Compliance Outlook, published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board, contains an excellent article which reviews and compares the rules for collecting Government Monitoring Information (GMI) under Regulations B (Equal Credit Opportunity Act) and Regulation C (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act). The article is available here.