Mortgagees of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (“HECMs,” more commonly known as reverse mortgages) obtained a significant victory in an important federal appellate court, which ruled last month that non-borrowing spouses are not protected from foreclosure by the statute authorizing the HECM program. In Estate of Jones v. Live Well Financial, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concluded that 12 U.S.C. § 1715z-20(j)’s safeguards do not limit a mortgagee’s “right…

On September 21, 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”)’s Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) completed a review of HUD’s partial claims program. In many ways, the title of the OIG audit report, “HUD Did Not Have Adequate Controls To Ensure That Partial Claim Notes for FHA Loans Were Properly Tracked for Future Collection,” speaks for itself. As OIG reports typically drive process changes within HUD program offices, FHA mortgagees may…

Can your phone store telephone numbers and dial them? If so, it’s an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), said the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The opinion in Marks v. Crunch San Diego creates a circuit split on the issue and highlights the difficulty courts have in applying statutory language from a pre-smartphone world to the technological capacity of the devices that half of you are using…

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently addressed a matter of first impression regarding landlord liability under the Fair Housing Act (FHA): whether a landlord may be liable under the FHA for failing to address tenant-on-tenant discrimination. The court answered with a resounding “yes,” holding that the FHA creates liability where a landlord has actual notice of harassment based on protected status and chooses not to take reasonable steps within…

In a previous blog post, we examined the “mixed bag” result of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in ACA International v. Federal Communications Commission. The ACA International decision narrowed the scope of potential liability for businesses under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by striking down inconsistent and overly broad portions of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) guidance regarding the definition of an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS). Prior FCC orders’…

September 11, 2018, was a big day for Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and crypto-related enforcement activity. In the Eastern District of New York, Judge Raymond Dearie issued an order neglecting to dismiss an indictment against Maksim Zaslavskiy for securities fraud relating to Zaslavisky’s involvement with an ICO for “REcoin” and another referred to as “Diamond.” This case originated with a civil complaint filed almost a year ago in September 2017, which was stayed pending the criminal case…

As discussed in Part 1, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CalCoPA) is a game-changing privacy act that sets a new bar for consumer privacy rights in the U.S. The primary reason it differs from existing legislation is that it goes beyond merely having to provide assurances or notices and requires organizations to be prepared to respond to individual requests with disclosures regarding consumers’ data collection and use. The Act was Amended last…