Fair Lending

In a significant victory in the fight for fair lending, we secured a major jury verdict against New York-based Emigrant Savings Bank and Emigrant Mortgage Company for discriminatory mortgage lending. The June 2016 liability verdict was both the first case in which a jury held a bank accountable for lending practices that contributed to the country’s 2008 financial collapse, and the first reverse redlining case ever to be tried in federal court.

In 2013, in the first reverse redlining case filed against a for-profit school in the country for engaging in deceptive practices to encourage low-income African-American students to take out large federal student loans for an education that the school knew was inadequate, the firm obtained a $5 million settlement for a class of over 4,000 members. 

Relman Colfax represents the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana and five individuals in this class action lawsuit against an Indianapolis realty company for operating a predatory and discriminatory rent-to-own scheme in the Indianapolis area. The suit alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Truth in Lending Act, and state law.

The firm represented a fair housing organization in developing initiatives with a lender that are designed to ensure that individuals who are on, or plan to be on, maternity, paternity or adoptive leave receive fair and equal access to mortgage loans.

In this groundbreaking lawsuit, Relman Colfax challenged Santander Bank's poor record of mortgage lending in minority neighborhoods in Providence, Rhode Island.