Consumer Financial Services Litigation | McCarter & English, LLP

We defend companies across all sectors of the consumer financial services industry against consumer claims and governmental actions and help them anticipate litigation trends and regulatory shifts impacting the industry.

Our clients include national and regional banks, mortgage lenders, mortgage loan servicers, credit card issuers, and other consumer credit providers. We provide strategic counsel to these companies concerning the broad spectrum of issues and disputes unique to the consumer finance marketplace.

From guiding clients through enforcement actions and government investigations to defending them in individual and class action claims, we have proven experience resolving disputes in and out of court or administrative proceedings and navigating clients through evolving regulatory compliance requirements.

Our litigation experience is vast. Whether protecting clients’ interests through the full life cycle of a consumer loan or credit arrangement or by preparing amicus briefs in cases that could effect industry change, we defend clients in state and federal courts throughout the country. This experience includes defending individual claims against loan servicers and loan investors and employing unique remedies and strategies to protect company assets.

In the past five years alone, we have defended financial institutions in more than 500 matters, including investigations, lawsuits, and class action claims brought under state and federal laws and regulations affecting consumer finance. These laws and regulations include such areas as:

Equal Credit Opportunity Act
Fair Credit Reporting Act
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
Fair Housing Act
Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act
Truth-in-Lending Act
Challenges to REMICs and other Asset Securitization Vehicles
State Unfair Deceptive Acts and Practices Laws

Representative Matters

Obtained an apparent first impression ruling from a Connecticut Superior Court applying a three-year statute of limitations (SOL) to time bar a quiet title claim when the court granted our defendant landowners summary judgment dismissing the plaintiff neighboring landowner’s claims for quiet title and trespass. In dismissing the quiet title claim as time barred, the court adopted our argument that because the quiet title statute lacks an applicable SOL and no published decisions had ruled on its effective SOL, the three-year tort SOL was most analogous to apply—rather than a 15-year adverse possession SOL—because the plaintiff alleged tortious acts of encroachment against defendant landowner.

Obtained for our client loan servicer a favorable ruling from New York’s Appellate Division, Second Department that precluded a meritorious statute of limitations defense from being interposed in a foreclosure action on the ground that the defendant’s post-action conveyance of collateral property divested it of standing to contest the action.

Obtained a summary judgment ruling from a Connecticut Superior Court in favor of our client loan servicer in a quiet title action. On a novel point of law, the court ruled that a prior strict foreclosure judgment collaterally estopped the foreclosed owner from asserting claims to title to the mortgaged property even though, in the appeal of the prior foreclosure suit, the Connecticut Appellate Court affirmed the strict foreclosure judgment after the law days passed and did not dismiss the appeal as moot.

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Representative Matters

Landowners—Summary judgment win, case law clarification

Loan servicer—Appellate win

Loan servicer—Summary judgment win