BofA Tries To Block Class-Action Lawsuit

Bank of America moved to block a potential class-action suit in federal district court yesterday, saying the plaintiffs had failed to produce evidence of widespread abuses.

The case before U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel in Boston involves claims by several homeowners who sought loan modifications from Bank of America under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), an initiative introduced by the Obama administration in 2009 to help distressed homeowners keep their homes.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that Bank of America deliberately lied, stonewalled, and mislaid documents in order to prevent homeowners who were successfully completing trial modifications from qualifying for permanent mods, enabling the bank to foreclose instead.

– See more at: http://www.bankerandtradesman.com/news155977.html#sthash.yfhx0jFR.dpuf

An attorney turned whistle-blower at Colorado’s second-largest foreclosure law firm has detailed to state investigators a pattern of abuses that stretch beyond the scope of their investigation into alleged overbilling practices.

Susan Hendrick testified at a hearing Thursday that she told the state attorney general’s office about bill-padding she witnessed while a lawyer at Aronowitz & Mecklenburg in Denver, conduct that investigators say needlessly cost homeowners facing foreclosure millions of dollars. She then laid out a number of other alleged abuses she says happened.

The abuses ranged from the padding of attorney hours to allegations that the law firm destroyed evidence that prosecutors were seeking in their investigation into billing practices by foreclosure law firms, according to testimony in Denver District Court.

The hearing before District Judge R. Michael Mullins was to determine whether Hendrick, an associate at Aronowitz since 2007, was a special counsel to the firm in its efforts to clean up the problems she exposed.

Attorney Robert Aronowitz, 65, testified he was “absolutely shocked” by…