In an opinion published today concerning the 2007 lawsuit filed by then Attorney General Cuomo against First American Corporation and its former appraisal management company eAppraiseIT, New York state’s highest court — its Court of Appeals — has ruled that the trial court properly denied eAppraiseIT’s motion to dismiss. In Read more…
Caption of 11-14-11 Order In a November 14 ruling in the FDIC’s lawsuit against CoreLogic and its various subsidiaries, Judge Carter dismissed the FDIC’s gross negligence claim (with leave for the FDIC to amend) based on the economic loss rule for the same reasons he previously dismissed the FDIC’s similar Read more…
Today, four years after New York’s then Attorney General Cuomo filed his state’s lawsuit against First American eAppraiseIT (now part of CoreLogic), the New York Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) heard eAppraiseIT’s appeal of the trial court’s denial of its motion to dismiss. eAppraiseIT’s argument on appeal, as Read more…
Appraisal management companies (AMCs) — and individual appraisers themselves — have avoided the brunt of mortgage-related litigation and losses stemming from the lending crisis. Both AMCs and appraisers have not been forced to defend against 98%+ of the potential liability claims that lenders might have tried to press about allegedly Read more…
The FDIC is now contending that independent contractor appraisers are the legal agents of appraisal management companies (AMCs) in both of its cases against LSI Appraisal and CoreLogic. Based on this contention, the FDIC asserts that the AMCs should be liable for all damages attributable to the alleged negligence of Read more…
As was first predicted on this blog here, the FDIC, as receiver for failed lender Washington Mutual, sued appraisal management company LSI Appraisal and its corporate parent Lender Processing Services for breach of contract and gross negligence on May 9, 2011. The lawsuit relates to hundreds of thousands of appraisals Read more…
(See updates here and here.) In December, we offered 11 predictions for AMC liability risks in 2011. Three of the predictions were: #1 — several AMCs would be sued by the FDIC, #5 — some AMCs would see their “reps and warrants” come back to bite them, and #11 — Read more…
We are looking forward to another challenging year in the business of insuring and defending claims in the appraisal industry. Based on recently filed cases, threatened litigation and emerging issues, these are LIA Administrators & Insurance Services’ predictions for the biggest liability risks that we expect for appraisal management companies Read more…