Balch & Bingham LLP

Balch & Bingham LLP is a corporate law firm with more than 230 attorneys across offices in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Gulfport and Jackson, Mississippi; and Washington, D.C. We are recognized for our deep experience serving clients in regulated industries, including energy, financial services and healthcare, and our established practices in business, environmental, government relations, labor and employment and litigation.

Balch & Bingham LLP Blogs

Data Privacy & Security Observer

Past Due

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

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Matthew B. Ames

Conrad Anderson

Latest from Balch & Bingham LLP

Data Privacy & Security Observer

Mortgage Analytics Company and FTC Agree to Settlement on Allegations Related to Third-Party Vendor Data Breach

By Nick Theodore

January 8, 2021

Ascension Data & Analytics LLC, a data analytics company for the mortgage industry, has entered into a proposed settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) following allegations that it violated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s (GLB) Safeguards Rule by failing to ensure that a third-party vendor was adequately securing data of mortgage holders. The FTC complaint states that Ascension contracted with the third-party vendor, OpticsML, to scan and store mortgage documents containing sensitive financial information of…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

Cut them off at the Past – New COVID Stimulus Package Should Foreclose Any Possibility of Plaintiff Victory in Agent Fee Class Actions

By Gregory C. Cook, Conrad Anderson & Tyler P. Bishop

December 22, 2020

Last night, Congress passed a new COVID-19 stimulus package containing an important amendment to the CARES Act which should foreclose any possibility the Plaintiffs in the Agent Fee class actions currently pending across the country can successfully argue banks must pay them “agent fees” for preparing PPP loan applications. The amendment establishes that, contrary to the Plaintiffs’ assertions, banks are not required to pay agent fees absent a written agreement with the agent to do…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

Banks Headed for Total Victory in Agent Fees Class Actions

By Gregory C. Cook, Conrad Anderson & Tyler P. Bishop

December 14, 2020

Twice this year, Balch & Bingham reported on the wave of “Agent Fee” class actions against lenders who made PPP loans under the CARES Act. At one point, there were over sixty such lawsuits spread across the federal courts, alleging that banks were required to pay CPAs and others who assisted borrowers with loan applications. Since then, eight different federal judges have now ruled in favor of the banks and dismissed Agent Fee class actions.…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals Doubles Down on “Strict Compliance” with Notice Provisions of Standard Mortgage’s Paragraph 22

By Michael Taunton & Gabe Quistorff

November 18, 2020

This past June, in Barnes v. U.S. National Bank, No. 2180699, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals held that a mortgagee’s notice of acceleration failed to strictly comply with the notice provisions contained in Paragraph 22 (“Paragraph 22”) of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Uniform Mortgage. As a result, the Court held that the foreclosure sale was void.…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

Tennessee Court of Appeals Becomes First Appellate Court to Affirm Dismissal of Class Action Challenging Multiple “Overdraft” or NSF Fees for Same Transaction or “Item.”

By Gregory C. Cook, Adam Israel & Tyler P. Bishop

November 11, 2020

Earlier this year, Balch & Bingham reported on the dismissal of one of the first class actions challenging financial institutions for charging multiple “overdraft” or not sufficient funds (“NSF”) fees for the same transaction or “item.” In these cases, Plaintiffs allege financial institutions may only charge an overdraft fee once for each “item” – be it a debit, check, draft, withdrawal, ACH payment request, etc. – no matter how many times merchants represent the transaction…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

Giving Teeth to Article III Standing Requirements in the Eleventh Circuit.

By Meghan E. Pieler, Jason Tompkins & Gregory C. Cook

November 5, 2020

The federal courts have been struggling for several years to clarify Article III standing law. Is it enough that a plaintiff satisfy the elements of a federal consumer protection statute? Is it enough that a data breach have happened? Or, must the plaintiff show that they have actually been damaged or that there is a substantial risk that they will be damaged? On October 28, 2020 the Eleventh Circuit handed down a sharply split en…

Data Privacy & Security Observer

California’s CPRA (“CCPA 2.0”) Likely to Pass with Majority of Votes Counted

By Brandon Robinson

November 4, 2020

As the nation closely watches the election results coming in, the majority of votes counted in California suggest that the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”, or commonly known as “CCPA 2.0”), is on track to pass. Proposition 24 under the California General Election, as of the information available to us at the time of this blog post, is likely to pass with 6,342,807 (56.1%) votes in favor and 4,966,086 (43.9%) votes against, with…

Southeast Financial Litigation Monitor

RETREAT! “Agent Fee” Class Actions Moving Against Plaintiffs

By Tyler P. Bishop, Conrad Anderson & Gregory C. Cook

October 26, 2020

Earlier this year, Balch & Bingham reported on the wave of “Agent Fee” class actions against lenders who made PPP loans under the CARES Act. At one point, there were over sixty such lawsuits, spread across the federal courts, alleging that banks were required to pay CPAs and others who assisted borrowers with loan applications. Since then, however, virtually every ruling has been in favor of the banks, and now there is real reason to…

Data Privacy & Security Observer

NIST Publishes Technical Note on Predicting Botnet Attacks

By Brandon Robinson

October 23, 2020

On October 22, 2020, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) published NIST Technical Note (TN) 2111, “An Empirical Study on Flow-based Botnet Attacks Prediction”. The note, authored by Mitsuhiro Hatada and Matthew Scholl of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory, presents a method to predict botnet attacks, such as mass spam email and distributed denial-of-service attacks (“DDoS”). This is particularly timely as botnet threats continue to rise in the era of the Internet of Things…

Data Privacy & Security Observer

California Attorney General Proposes Third Set of Modifications to CCPA Regulations

By Brandon Robinson

October 13, 2020

On October 12, 2020, California’s Attorney General proposed a third set of modifications to California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) regulations. These proposed modifications come nearly two months after the final regulations were approved and made effective by the California Office of Administrative Law (“OAL”) on August 14, and less than a month before the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) will be put to the voters on the statewide ballot on November 3, 2020. Below, we…

Balch & Bingham LLP

Balch & Bingham LLP Blogs

Blog Authors

Mortgage Analytics Company and FTC Agree to Settlement on Allegations Related to Third-Party Vendor Data Breach

Cut them off at the Past – New COVID Stimulus Package Should Foreclose Any Possibility of Plaintiff Victory in Agent Fee Class Actions

Banks Headed for Total Victory in Agent Fees Class Actions

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals Doubles Down on “Strict Compliance” with Notice Provisions of Standard Mortgage’s Paragraph 22

Tennessee Court of Appeals Becomes First Appellate Court to Affirm Dismissal of Class Action Challenging Multiple “Overdraft” or NSF Fees for Same Transaction or “Item.”

Giving Teeth to Article III Standing Requirements in the Eleventh Circuit.

California’s CPRA (“CCPA 2.0”) Likely to Pass with Majority of Votes Counted

RETREAT! “Agent Fee” Class Actions Moving Against Plaintiffs

NIST Publishes Technical Note on Predicting Botnet Attacks

California Attorney General Proposes Third Set of Modifications to CCPA Regulations

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