Armstrong-Harris v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:21-cv-07637
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Armstrong-Harris v. Wells Fargo Bank, Judge Gilliam partially granted Wells Fargo’s motion, preserving one claim, striking one, and dismissing the rest.
Cedric Armstrong-Harris’s claims were affected. The court allowed his fraudulent-business-practices claim under the UCL to proceed past the motion to dismiss, struck his HOEPA claim, and dismissed his other claims without leave to amend. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., and Specialized Loan Servicing were the defendants involved in the ruling.
What happened
Armstrong-Harris v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. concerns a borrower’s lawsuit about a mortgage, loan modifications, and foreclosure proceedings involving Wells Fargo Bank and Specialized Loan Servicing. Cedric Armstrong-Harris represented himself and asserted several claims, including claims under California’s unfair competition law and federal lending laws.
The court denied the motion to dismiss the claim based on allegedly fraudulent business practices under California’s unfair competition law. It granted the request to strike the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act claim because Armstrong-Harris added it without permission and because the allegations appeared time-barred and insufficient. The court dismissed the predatory-lending and Truth in Lending Act claim, the related unfair-competition claim, and all other remaining claims without leave to amend.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. ruled that Armstrong-Harris had not corrected the deficiencies identified in the court’s earlier order, and that another amendment would be futile. The court also scheduled a telephone case-management conference.
The detailed version
- Armstrong-Harris v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. · No. 4:21-cv-07637
- Haywood Gilliam
- Apr. 11, 2023
Background
Cedric Armstrong-Harris filed this self-represented lawsuit against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., and Specialized Loan Servicing. He alleged that he owned a residential property in Oakland, California; that a 2007 loan on the property was issued by World Savings Bank, which Wells Fargo later acquired; and that he entered into a loan-modification agreement with Wells Fargo in 2015. In 2021, Specialized Loan Servicing demanded payment of the remaining loan balance, and the defendants later began foreclosure proceedings.
Armstrong-Harris’s amended complaint asserted 11 causes of action: unfair business practices under the unlawful prong of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL); slander of title; alter-ego liability; unfair business practices under the fraudulent prong of the UCL; a claim under the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act (HOEPA); predatory lending and violations of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA); defamation; false light; cancellation; cancellation of a voidable contract; and intentional misrepresentation. Wells Fargo moved to dismiss all claims and to strike the HOEPA claim.
Court’s analysis
The court applied the standard for a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Under that standard, a complaint must allege enough facts to state a legally plausible claim, and the court generally accepts the complaint’s factual allegations as true. Because Armstrong-Harris was representing himself, the court also construed his complaint liberally.
Fraudulent-practices UCL claim
The court denied the motion as to this claim. The court said this was the only claim that had survived the previous motion to dismiss. Although Armstrong-Harris had moved key allegations to another part of the amended complaint, the allegations remained, and the court declined to dismiss a claim it had already found adequately pleaded merely because the allegations had been relocated.
HOEPA claim
The court granted Wells Fargo’s request to strike this claim. The court had previously instructed Armstrong-Harris not to add new claims without Wells Fargo’s consent or the court’s permission. He added the HOEPA claim without either. The court also stated that the claim appeared time-barred and that the amended complaint did not allege facts showing that the loan qualified for HOEPA protection.
Predatory-lending, TILA, and related UCL claims
The court dismissed Armstrong-Harris’s predatory-lending and TILA claim, along with the UCL claim to the extent it was based on those alleged violations. In its earlier order, the court had found those claims time-barred. The amended complaint added no facts that would change the limitations analysis, including no facts supporting equitable tolling, delayed discovery, or due diligence.
Other claims
The court dismissed the remaining causes of action. It found that Armstrong-Harris had not supplied new facts addressing the deficiencies identified in the earlier order. Among other problems, the court said he had not adequately identified how HOLA was violated; a publication supporting slander of title; facts supporting alter-ego liability; a defamatory publication; the publicity and actual malice required for false light; grounds for treating the deed of trust as void or voidable; facts supporting cancellation of a voidable contract; or facts supporting intentional misrepresentation.
Disposition
The court denied Wells Fargo’s motion as to the fraudulent-practices UCL claim. It granted the motion to strike the HOEPA cause of action. It granted the motion to dismiss all remaining claims without leave to amend. The court concluded that further amendment would be futile because Armstrong-Harris had not addressed the identified deficiencies, had not properly responded to Wells Fargo’s arguments, and had not followed the court’s instructions. The court also set a telephone case-management conference and directed the parties to meet and confer and submit case-management statements.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.