Safapou v. Rushmore Loan Management, LLC
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:19-cv-04623
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Safapou v. Rushmore, Judge Corley granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the listed claims, allowing Safapou 30 days to amend.
Cherie Safapou and the defendants, including Rushmore Loan Management, LLC; the listed claims were dismissed with leave to amend.
What happened
In Safapou v. Rushmore Loan Management, LLC, the defendants asked the court to dismiss claims concerning alleged conduct related to a loan payment and corporate advances.
The court dismissed the intentional and negligent misrepresentation, professional negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims because the complaint did not adequately plead required facts. The court allowed amendment.
Judge Jacquelyn Scott Corley granted the motion to dismiss with leave to amend. She gave Safapou 30 days to file an amended complaint and referred the parties to the court’s alternative-dispute-resolution program.
The detailed version
- Safapou v. Rushmore Loan Management, LLC · No. 3:19-cv-04623
- Jacquelyn Corley
- Sept. 26, 2019
Background
The defendants moved to dismiss the fifth through ninth claims for relief. The court stated that the motion was granted with leave to amend. The opinion then addressed four groups of claims.
Claims and Analysis
Intentional and negligent misrepresentation. The complaint alleged that Cherie Safapou was fraudulently induced to make an April 2016 loan payment and pay corporate advances. The court found that the complaint did not adequately identify the alleged misrepresentations, who made them, when they were made, what was untrue, or how Rushmore knew they were untrue. The court therefore dismissed these claims with leave to amend.
Professional negligence. The court dismissed this claim with leave to amend because Safapou did not allege what profession the defendants practiced or identify the applicable standard of care. The court also noted that she cited no case supporting a professional-negligence claim by a borrower against a loan servicer. Although the court allowed amendment, it stated that recovery was precluded without physical injury.
Negligent infliction of emotional distress. The court dismissed this claim with leave to amend because the alleged negligent conduct did not itself cause physical injury or create a risk of physical injury. The allegation that Safapou fainted and fell because of her emotional distress did not satisfy that requirement.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court dismissed this claim with leave to amend because the alleged conduct was not sufficiently extreme to exceed the bounds of conduct tolerated in a civilized community. The court distinguished the case cited by Safapou because that case involved an actual foreclosure, while this complaint alleged neither a foreclosure nor a pending notice of default.
Disposition
Judge Jacquelyn Scott Corley granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss with leave to amend. The court ordered that any amended complaint be filed within 30 days. It also referred the parties to the court’s alternative-dispute-resolution program for a telephone conference and stated that the order disposed of Docket No. 6.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.