Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against BPO and AMC Firms for Allegedly Unpaid Fees

Unpaid BPO Fees Class Action

On December 2, 2013, three law firms in Florida, Washington and Colorado teamed together to file a class action complaint on behalf of real estate agents and others allegedly owed unpaid fees for broker price opinions ordered by BrokerPriceOpinion.com. The complaint also names three-related companies First Valuation, LLC, First Valuation Services, LLC, and First Valuation Technology, LLC as defendants on the basis that they are “alter egos” of BrokerPriceOpinion.com and do not have true corporate separateness in their operation. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Colorado, where the defendants are based.

The named plaintiff in the lawsuit is Kathy Wornicki, a Florida real estate agent, who alleges that she is owed $880 for 29 BPOs performed in 2012 and early 2013. She contends that BrokerPriceOpinion.com has breached a contract to pay for those services within 60 days. She further alleges that the defendants have not only failed to pay her but also failed to pay hundreds or thousands of other persons performing BPOs. The plaintiff’s lawyers refer in a few places to BPOs as “evaluations” and “appraisals” but the lawsuit appears only to relate to fees for actual BPOs and not any other services managed by the defendants.  For jurisdictional purposes, the complaint alleges that the total amount of fees at issue exceeds $5 million but does not allege the number of agents or others owed money. However, the complaint seeks to litigate the case as a class action on behalf of all such persons and firms.  This the class definition alleged in the complaint:

Class action lawsuit against BPO AMC for unpad fees

The full complaint in the above case is available in the AMC case section here of www.appraiserlaw.com. Because of the many contacts I have received asking for more information about the case, I have copied here from the complaint the contact information for one of the law firms handling the lawsuit:

Beth E. Terrell
Whitney B. Stark
TERRELL MARSHALL DAUDT & WILLIE PLLC
936 North 34th Street, Suite 300 Seattle, Washington 98103-8869
Telephone: (206) 816-6603 Facsimile: (206) 350-3528
Email: bterrell@tmdwlaw.com
Email: wstark@tmdwlaw.com

Many of the significant financial and legal issues affecting appraisal management companies in recent years have been covered on this site.  Of particular relevance is a post from January in which I explained why lenders need to pay attention to these issues when contracting with appraisal management companies. That post is here. For OCC-supervised lenders, the financial stability and responsibility, and litigation and insurance matters as well, of third party service providers like AMCs is now a front-and-center compliance issue on which the OCC focused in its October 30, 2013, bulletin Risk Management Guidance for Third-Party Relationships.

[Please note I am not an attorney working on the case below. If you have questions about the case, please direct them to the attorneys representing the plaintiff. The contact information is provided below.]

Peter Christensen
Peter Christensen

Peter Christensen

Peter Christensen is an attorney, licensed in California and Washington. His legal practice primarily serves the real estate valuation community - Valuation Legal. He's the author of Risk Management for Real Estate Appraisers and Appraisal Firms, published by the Appraisal Institute.

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2 Responses

  1. Avatar Maureen LaRose says:

    I am a real estate broker in Connecticut and prepare brokers price opinions for several BPO companies. I have several BPO orders that I have not been paid for from First Valuation aka Brokerspriceopinion.com since July 24, 2013 through May, 2014 with a total of $1910 owed. I have been trying to get this company to pay for orders already completed for the past several months with no cooperation. Today I thought I would check out the internet to see if there were others with the same problem. I filed a complaint with the Colorado Attorney Generals Office. If there are any open lawsuits I would like to be included as a possible complaintant. Please contact me at: maureenhomepro@yahoo.com.

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  2. Avatar melissa says:

    thank you for this I am calling the attorney general now

    0

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Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against BPO and AMC Firms for Allegedly Unpaid Fees

by Peter Christensen time to read: 2 min
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