Law and legal issues

Wells Fargo must pay $97 million to home mortgage consultants and private mortgage bankers in California who didn't get the breaks they were entitled to under the state's stringent labor laws.

CEO Tim Sloan and board chair Elizabeth Duke fielded tough questions Tuesday on everything from the embattled bank’s culture to its ties to the private prison industry.

A class action filed last week alleges that Renovate America and Renew Financial failed to provide consumer protections promised to L.A. County, that this constitutes elder abuse, and the county is complicit.

A panel of judges remained skeptical of claims by Leandra English, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that she is the rightful head of the agency. But they didn’t sound convinced that current acting Director Mick Mulvaney is, either.

Banks have not yet finished with the wave of lawsuits stemming from the financial crisis. There are ways they can better ward off those threats next time around.

The investigation targeted 36 residential mortgage-backed securities deals involving $31 billion worth of loans, more than half of which defaulted, according to the Justice Department.

Banks say that an appeals court’s decision to ease restrictions will allow them to warn customers more easily when loans are past due or accounts have been compromised. But consumer groups argue that the decision gives financial firms license to market their products more aggressively and could lead to more harassing phone calls over unpaid debts.

Quicken Loans affiliate Amrock Inc. is appealing a jury verdict ordering it to pay $706.2 million to analytics company HouseCanary in a legal dispute over a software licensing agreement.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule on Thursday that gives mortgage servicers more latitude in sending periodic statements to borrowers in bankruptcy.

There's been a legislative bottleneck since the the crisis-era law went into effect, but Congress has moved forward on a handful of significant changes.