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Mary focuses her practice on litigation and strategy in lender liability, check and bank operation, class action, consumer finance, fiduciary matters, and creditor’s rights disputes. While Mary litigates extensively in the federal and state trial and appellate courts in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, she represents banking clients in cases of all sizes nationwide.

On August 24, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss claims asserted under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA), holding that for claims based on collections suits, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the consumer is served with a copy of…

Last year, a professional plaintiff obtained a judgment of over $828k in a case alleging 104 calls in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The district court in the Northern District of West Virginia found that the individual and corporate defendants failed to respond “fulsomely and accurately” to discovery requests and to comply with court orders pertaining to those requests. As a sanction, the district court entered a default judgment against them.

In Valentine v. Mullooly, Jeffrey, Rooney & Fylnn LLP the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey found that the plaintiff had not suffered an injury in fact and therefore lacked standing to assert a claim under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA).

In a matter involving the bona fide error defense to claims asserted under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA), an Indiana court of appeals reversed a trial court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the defendant debt collector holding that the defense did not apply because the mistake at issue was not of…

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, holding that a district court must stay its proceedings while an interlocutory appeal on the question of arbitrability is pending. The decision resolves a circuit split on the question of whether such a stay is mandatory or discretionary. Justice Kavanaugh…

If a financial institution unilaterally reopens a closed deposit account to process a transaction, does that constitute an unfair act or practice under the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA)? According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in its Consumer Financial Protection Circular 2023-02 issued on May 10, the answer is yes: “This practice may…

On May 1, 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed a rule to establish consumer protections for residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans.

A PACE loan is a way for consumers to borrow money for home improvements by increasing their property tax payments. Homeowners repay PACE loans through an additional assessment that is…

Financial services industry groups are staunchly opposing a proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) to require supervised nonbank entities to provide information about their use of certain terms and conditions in standard-form contracts. The CFPB would then compile this information into a registry available to the public. In individual letters dated…

Yesterday, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion declining to follow the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Community Financial Services Association of America, Ltd. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) finding no “support for the Fifth Circuit’s conclusion” that the CFPB’s funding structure is unconstitutional in Supreme…