Disputes, Litigation and Arbitration

Our attorneys are leaders in the consumer financial services industry, and you can expect world-class service and knowledge. Our team’s strategic solutions and guidance provide our clients with the ability to achieve their goals and best possible outcomes. We bring significant experience in the strategic defense of the full range of federal and state consumer financial services laws and regulations applicable to traditional and nontraditional financial services providers, and related class actions. Our team has handled hundreds of individual and/or class action disputes and cases across the United States, including matters involving the following:

• Defense of consumer-based claims brought under state common law or Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts or Practices (UDAAP)/Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices (UDAP) statutes and under various federal statutes, such as the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the Civil Rights Act and RICO
• Mortgage lending litigation, including mortgage origination and servicing claims, appraisal and transaction fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, predatory lending and foreclosure practices
• Discriminatory lending claims based on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and other lending data and brought under federal statutes such as the Fair Housing Act (FHA), ECOA and Civil Rights Act
• Debt collection practices
• False advertising and unfair competition matters
• Check collection and forgery matters
• Issues concerning the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and the Expedited Funds Availability Act
• Matters involving the wrongful disclosure of confidential information

In addition, our attorneys regularly act as either sole counsel or national counsel in nationwide litigation avoidance programs and defensive litigation and arbitration.

Class Actions

Class action lawsuits arising from consumer financial services can be a huge challenge, reflecting significant legal exposure and risk and expense. Vedder Price has extensive experience litigating these high-stakes cases and a lengthy track record of employing strategies to significantly reduce the risk of a large judgment or settlement. Our attorneys have successfully handled a high volume of class action lawsuits related to consumer financial services under federal statutes, as well as their state law corollaries, including FCRA, TCPA, FDCPA, ECOA, TILA and RESPA, in courts across the country.

Our deep knowledge of the standards for class certification make our attorneys a formidable opponent in a class action, regardless of the nature of the case.

The biggest risk in class action lawsuits comes from potential aggregation of many small claims, so we focus our class action defense on aggressively working to limit the stakes. For example, we may seek to enforce arbitration provisions that bar class actions, move to strike or dismiss class allegations early in the case, and/or identify opportunities for early nuisance value settlements of individual claims. If the case cannot be constrained at the outset, our attorneys have significant experience handling the all-important fight over class certification and have a history of successfully defeating motions for class certification in both state and federal courts. Of course, if the case is one that must be tried, our experienced litigators are prepared to take cases to trial and achieve favorable verdicts.

Statutory damages and massive class sizes can turn an inadvertent, technical violation of a statute into “bet the company” litigation. It is not uncommon for our firm to field calls from panicked clients who are facing potentially hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in liability. We are able to routinely guide those cases to reasonable resolutions that reassure our clients and let them get back to doing what they do best, instead of spending time and resources battling in litigation.

Our team also works closely with our regulatory and compliance, transactional, intellectual property and data privacy attorneys to bring a holistic approach to tackling projects while providing practical, business-focused guidance, recommendations and advice.