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Beverly Weber published in UTA
Beverly Weber was published in the UTA Quarterly Winter 2007 publication for her article on an Eastern District of Missouri District Court dismissal of two complaints against mortgage lenders for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The dismissals were in favor of Corinthian Mortgage Corporation, d/b/a Southbanc Mortgage and Shenendoah Valley National Bank, d/b/a Summit Mortgage, Case Nos. 4:06CV807 and 4:06CV1317, respectively.
Plaintiff alleged receipt of promotional letters from the defendant mortgage companies, which she claimed were not “firm offers of credit” and thus prohibited the defendants from accessing her personal information from the credit reporting agencies.
In dismissing the two complaints, the court determined that the mailings were in fact firm offers of legitimate credit products, and not mere guises for solicitation. The District Court relied on previous decisions of the Eastern District of Missouri in Pohl v. Countrywide Homes (Case No. 4:06CV928) and Klutho v. Home Loan Center, Inc. (Case No. 4:06CV1212) where Judge Perry concluded that a mailing is a firm offer of credit and not a solicitation if it contains something of value, more than nominal value. So long as the statutory criteria are met and there is more than nominal value offered in the mailing, the absence of interest rates and other specific terms does not prevent the offer from being a “firm offer of credit”.
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