Supreme Court to rule in mortgage lending case

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Supreme Court to rule in mortgage lending case

April 28, 2014 12:42:58 pm

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday granted certiorari [order list, PDF] in Jesinoski v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. [docket; cert. petition, PDF] to determine the requirements of the Truth in Lending Act [15 USC § 1635]. The Jesinoskis refinanced their house with Countrywide Home Loans in 2007, but Countrywide failed to furnish the Jesinoskis with all the information and disclosures required by the Act. The Jesinoskis attempted to rescind their loan transaction under 15 USC § 1635(a), sparking the case at hand. The federal courts of appeals are split on whether “a borrower [may] exercise his right to rescind a transaction in satisfaction of the requirements of Section 1635 by ‘notifying the creditor’ in writing within three years of the consummation of the transaction,” or “must a borrower file a lawsuit within three years of the consummation of the transaction.” The court will decide the issue next term.

The court also granted certiorari in Yates v. United States [docket; cert. petition, PDF]. The court limited the grant to question 1: “Whether … Yates was deprived of fair notice that destruction of fish would fall within the purview of 18 USC § 1519 [text], where the term ‘tangible object’ is ambiguous and undefined in the statute, and unlike the nouns accompanying ‘tangible object’ in section 1519, possesses no record-keeing [sic], documentary, or informational content or purpose.” John Yates, a commercial fisherman, was convicted under the “anti-shredding” provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for destroying undersized fish after being instructed to bring them back to port. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld his conviction [opinion].

Also Monday the court declined to hear a challenge to an indefinite detention law, denying certiorari in Hedges v. Obama [docket]. The lawsuit was filed by a group of journalists, authors and political activists challenging the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA) [text, PDF] which affirms the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in July that the group lacked standing to sue [JURIST report] because they failed to show that they were actually at risk of being targeted by the government policy.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.