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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Courts - "Mortgage-Related Litigation on the Rise"
That is the headline to this article by Tresa Baldas in The American Lawyer. It begins:
Mortgage-related lawsuits are on the rise, with homeowners and investors alike suing over allegedly being duped by the mortgage industry.According to a litigation report from MortgageDaily.com, an online mortgage news analyst, the number of mortgage-related lawsuits filed in the first quarter of this year jumped to 81, a more than 50 percent increase from the 50 cases tracked during the same quarter in 2008.
Cases tied to foreclosures, including actions against foreclosure-rescue firms, jumped to 12, triple from the four cases in the prior period. Lawsuits filed by mortgage-backed securities investors also increased, from four to 13, which pushed investor class actions to 21 cases -- the most of any type.
No surprise, said attorneys involved in mortgage banking regulatory matters.
"Is this expected? Yes. A trend like this is not uncommon when what you're talking about is, essentially, the aftermath or effects of an industrywide crisis, " said Michael Waldron, a partner in the Dallas office of Washington's Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider, which helped prepare the mortgage litigation report.
"The question I think you have is the timing [of the litigation]," Waldron said. "What we're seeing is the dust beginning to settle. I'm not contending that the crisis is over. But what I would suggest is that the dust is beginning to settle. People are beginning to kind of poke their heads out from the bunker, and they have allowed themselves some time to evaluate the landscape."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 27, 2009 01:23 PM
Posted to Courts in general