Law and legal issues

The U.S. government wants to intervene in JPMorgan Chase's fraud lawsuit against Frank founder Charlie Javice, asking a federal judge to halt pretrial information exchanges until she has been tried on criminal charges. 

Greenwood Financial and The Gathering Spot, a network of private clubs for the Black community, say they have reached an agreement after six months of lawsuits.

JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Citigroup and others will face a class-action suit over allegations of foreign exchange manipulation. 

The Minnesota Bankers Association and Lake Central Bank jointly filed a lawsuit against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over its nonsufficient funds fee rules' inclusion of "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" violations in its policy.

The group of banks would pay $68 million to settle the lawsuit, which originally estimated damages at $340 million.

Republicans have urged the Supreme Court to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by tying its funding to appropriations. But regulatory experts say that a ruling against the CFPB would threaten the funding of other similarly structured agencies including the Federal Reserve Board, the Farm Credit System and other regulators that are funded through fees or assessments.

The Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action in higher education has opened the door to challenges of diversity initiatives in the financial services sector, legal experts say. Internship programs for minority students could face scrutiny, as could efforts to increase workforce diversity.

The lawsuit against Prehired involves a relatively new product that consumer advocates say is akin to a student loan — and should be subject to far more protections.

With no settlement in sight, Spencer Savings Bank's case against a group of former depositors it says conspired with Larry Seidman to force a conversion appears headed for a courtroom battle.

The plaintiff that brought the case on behalf of the state says the banks inflated interest rates through a private, invitation-only VRDO index that influenced SIFMA's weekly index.

Management, in exchange, has agreed to assist company lawyers in potentially lucrative actions against firms they blame for BlockFi's collapse including FTX and failed crypto hedge-fund Three Arrows Capital.

In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court Tuesday, the bicameral group of 132 Republican members of Congress argued that an appeals court was right to rule last year that the Bureau's funding system is unlawful.

Mass arbitration is a fact of life in modern consumer finance litigation. Those hoping it will go away through court decisions or legislative change are primed to be sorely disappointed.

Some of the biggest banks on Wall Street are expected to go to trial in Illinois next month to face allegations they inflated interest rates on bonds to finance public works.

The proposal would bring companies cited for civil enforcement actions under its scope to bar them from doing business with the government-sponsored enterprises.

The company directed its bilingual team to steer customers away from products with no closing costs toward "predatory lending options" without disclosing the costs, in part by refusing to provide Spanish-language written materials, according to a lawsuit filed by current and former members of the company's bilingual mortgage sales team.

A challenge to the SEC's use of administrative law judges could have big implications for bank regulators. The FDIC, Fed, OCC and CFPB could be forced to go to federal court in cases that would otherwise be handled in-house.

Investors will get the chance to fill three director seats at the Philadelphia company, which last held an annual meeting in April 2021 and has been embroiled in a legal fight with a shareholder group.

A Florida pension fund is demanding the bank turn over files about a possible criminal probe into whether the bank violated federal law by setting up fake job interviews to meet in-house diversity guidelines. 

A former employee of The Change Company, which is the largest non-traditional mortgage lender in the U.S., claims in a new lawsuit that the firm mischaracterized the race, ethnicity and income of its borrowers. The company says the allegations, which relate to the representations it makes to be certified as a community development financial institution, are meritless.