specific – Pete's Take

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)

In an interesting decision issued today, Judge Katz (Essex County) denied a motion to dismiss filed by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's ("S&P") in an enforcement action brought against S&P by the New Jersey Attorney General. In Hoffman v. McGraw-Hill Financial, Inc., the Attorney General alleged that S&P violated the Consumer Fraud Act ("CFA") by misrepresenting to New Jersey consumers that S&P's analysis and rating of structured finance securities was independent and objective. The opinion contains decisions on both procedural personal jurisdiction issues and substantive CFA issues that all litigators should find interesting.

[Lawsuits against ratings agencies are nothing new. Several years ago, I wrote an article about these lawsuits and, at the time, the relative success the rating agencies had defending against them. (If you did not save your copy of the article, click here for another copy.) Historically, the rating agencies argued that their ratings were proetced under the First Amendment, but at least one court rejected this argument in the context of a motion to dismiss in a lawsuit that eventually settled.]

Continue reading “Enforcement Action Against Rating Agency Allowed To Proceed” →

by: Peter J. Gallagher

Today, the Appellate Division provided another reminder that it is not “bad faith” for a lender to abide by the terms of its mortgage with a borrower. In Warner v. Sovereign Bank, borrowers fell behind on their residential mortgage and contacted their lender to request a modification. While their request was under review, the lender filed a foreclosure complaint. The lender eventually denied the borrower’s request for a modification, but the two sides entered into a forbearance agreement.

The borrowers claimed — without evidential support according to the Appellate Division — that the lender required, as a condition of its agreeing to review their request for a modification, that borrowers not list their home for sale. Therefore, after their loan modification request was denied, the borrowers sued the lender claiming, among other things, that the lender acted in bad faith by initially not allowing them to list their home for sale and for then not providing them with a timely answer about their request for a modification. The borrowers claimed that both of these actions prevented them from selling their home, which caused them to sustain a substantial loss of their equity.

Continue reading “It’s Not “Bad Faith” For Lenders To Stick To The Terms Of Their Agreements With Borrowers” →