Tagged: E&O

December 20, 2011

FDIC Settles Claims Against WaMu

The FDIC Settles Claims Against WaMu’s Top Officers. What’s the FDIC’s Case Against LSI Appraisal Worth? In March of this year, the FDIC sued Washington Mutual’s former CEO Kerry Killinger, its former chief operating officer Stephen Rotella and its former head of residential lending David Schneider for $900 million in alleged damages resulting from their “gross negligence” in running WaMu’s residential lending business. The FDIC claimed that their negligence caused what it is the biggest bank failure in U.S. history. It also alleged that two of them unlawfully transferred assets to their wives to protect the assets from potential collection efforts. Despite those...

AMC / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / E&O / Errors & Omissions

November 29, 2011

FDIC Sues 29 Appraisers Over Loans By Downey Savings

In the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Day, the FDIC sued 29 more individual residential appraisers. All of the appraisers sued in this round reside in California. The FDIC’s complaints against them uniformly allege that the appraisers were professionally negligent by overappraising the value of properties securing loans by failed Downey Savings in 2004-2007. The average claim against each appraiser is for approximately $350,000. The complaints concern both origination and review appraisals. One of the recently sued appraisers has now been sued twice by the FDIC. This is the third appraiser to be sued twice by the FDIC. Another...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / E&O

August 25, 2011

What’s Wrong with Most Indemnification Clauses in AMC Contractor Agreements?

Objectionable indemnification clauses purport to shift 100% of the liability to individual appraisers… AMC independent contractor agreements are now receiving more attention. A key issue that many appraisers and regulators have focused on is that many AMC contractor agreements use very one-sided indemnification clauses to attempt to shift financial liability for the appraisals the AMCs manage to individual appraisers. NAR recently wrote to federal regulators expressing serious concern that such AMC clauses are interfering with appraiser independence and hurting appraisal accuracy and quality — i.e, if appraisers fear being sacked with unbearable liability based on an appraisal later being deemed...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / E&O