The nation’s largest Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage lender recently filed suit in Federal District Court against the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
The lawsuit follows three years of probing by the DOJ.
Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc. — the parent company of One Reverse Mortgage — took this action after the DOJ demanded Quicken Loans make public admissions that were “blatantly false, as well as pay an inexplicable penalty or face legal action,” the company said in a statement.
The online mortgage lender has provided the DOJ with more than 85,000 documents, including 55,000 emails, the company said, adding that the DOJ has also conducted “hundreds of hours” of depositions from numerous Quicken Loans team members.
“Three years later, the DOJ inquiry has resulted in the threat of a federal lawsuit based on faulty analysis of a miniscule number of cherry picked mortgages from the nearly 250,000 FHA loans the company has closed since 2007,” Quicken Loans said.
Quicken Loans ranks highest in overall customer satisfaction among major U.S. mortgage originators, a J.D. Power 2014 survey shows.
“After three years of struggling to understand the DOJ’s position and methodology that would warrant the country’s largest and highest quality FHA lender to make untrue admissions and pay an inexplicable penalty or face public legal action, it is time to ask the court to intervene,” said Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson in a statement. “No threat, including high-profile senseless lawsuits from powerful federal officials, will deter our company and its leadership from doing the right thing.”
Quicken Loans is represented in the suit by Michigan-based Morganroth & Morganroth and Goodwin Procter of Washington, DC.
“The Constitution provides for checks and balances among the three branches of government,” Emerson said. “We are hopeful and confident that after examining the facts, the judicial branch will exercise their authority to provide just relief from this misuse of power.”
Written by Cassandra Dowell
