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Court rejects suits over mortgage fee
- Updated: May 24, 2012 - 7:04 PM
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The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that three families cannot sue a mortgage company for allegedly charging them a loan discount fee without giving them a lower interest rate.
The court's decision tosses out lawsuits filed in 2008 against Quicken Loans in Louisiana by three families who claimed they paid the fees without receiving anything in return. The Freeman family paid $980 and the Bennett family $1,100 in loan discount fees but allegedly did not get lower interest rates in return. The Smith family's allegations focus partly on a loan origination fee of $5,100, which they claim was mislabeled a loan discount fee.
A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, saying the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act made it improper. That decision, which was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, was appealed to the Supreme Court. The law says no "person shall give and no person shall accept any portion, split or percentage of any charge made or received for the rendering of a real estate settlement service in connection with a transaction involving a federally related mortgage loan other than for services actually performed."
The argument is over whether that law "prohibits the collection of an unearned charge by a single settlement provider, or whether it covers only transactions in which a provider shares part of a settlement-service charge with one or more other persons who did nothing to earn it," said Justice Antonia Scalia. "In our view, [the law] is unambiguous. It covers only a settlement-service provider's splitting of a fee with one or more other persons."
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