Week Adjourned: 10.29.10

Bank of America under fire for foreclosure tacticsTop Class Actions

What’s the word de jour? Foreclosure—actually—make that Foreclosure Class Actions. This week saw several foreclosure lawsuits filed against big banks. Possibly the most recent, was filed against BAC Home Loans Servicing, which is a subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation, and successor in interest to Countrywide Home Loans Servicing; Deutsche Bank National Trust Company; and U.S. Bank National Association. The suit was filed on behalf of all those property owners who lost title to their property in foreclosure proceedings based on false and perjurious affidavits filed by the banks and their servicing companies. 

Perjurious affidavits? What the heck are those, you ask? Well like everything, foreclosure is a business—a business that seemingly works on volume. Apparently, the banks have been hiring so-called “robo signers” or “affidavit slaves”—employees who literally sign hundreds of foreclosure documents a day, according to the Wall Street Journal, without carefully reviewing their contents. The Washington Post recently ran a story on a man who has signed as many as 10,000 foreclosure documents in one month. 

Back to the lawsuit. The BAC suit alleges that the defendant banks obtained wrongful foreclosures by abusing the court process and submitting affidavits that were false, even though sworn to under penalty of perjury, as the basis for obtaining foreclosure judgments. They seek to restore title to the property owners.

Another foreclosure class action filed this week also named the omnipresent Bank of America (BoFA) as a defendant, not surprising since BoFA reportedly holds one in five mortgages in the Continue reading “Week Adjourned: 10.29.10”

Week Adjourned: 10.8.10

BMW under fire for turbo lag and more...Top Class Actions

“It’s Not Turbo Lag, it’s Foreplay”. Well, that’s what the t-shirts say, but clearly the makers of the ultimate driving machine—BMW—and their drivers must think foreplay’s a bad thing. BMW got hit with a national class action this week over high pressure fuel pumps (HPFP) and turbo chargers.

The allegations in the case concern certain BMW’s produced between 2007 and 2010, and focus on two design defects. 

First, the suit claims that BMW’s new fuel injection system that supposedly incorporates a new ‘state of the art’ fuel pump actually malfunctions at an alarmingly high rate. As a result, many BMW owners have had to repeatedly replace their fuel pumps, sometimes within 1,000 miles of vehicle ownership.

The second problem relates to the BMW turbo chargers. Specifically, the complaint alleges that owners of the affected vehicles were told that BMW’s new engine had eliminated ‘turbo lag.’ ‘Turbo lag’ is the delay between the time that the driver of a vehicle presses the accelerator and the time that turbo chargers on the engine essentially ‘kick in’ to provide added power to the engine.

However, shortly after the vehicles were released, BMW began to receive complaints from Continue reading “Week Adjourned: 10.8.10”