Bank of America has asked a judge to order Cook County to pay part of the bank's tab for fighting the county's "far-fetched" discrimination lawsuit, which alleged the lender made discriminatory loans to minorities.
"The County developed no evidence of intentional discrimination despite years of discovery," Bank of America asserted.
Bank of America filed a request June 2 with Judge Elaine Bucklo, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C. The bank did not state in its filing how much money it is seeking, but said it will submit an amount if Bucklo agrees the bank's deserves payment.
| Tony Webster from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
In 2014, the county lodged a suit alleging the bank violated the U.S. Fair Housing Act, by extending home loans to minorities with rates and terms more burdensome than those imposed on whites. In addition, the county alleged the bank made loans to minorities who could not afford them and inflated appraisals to support inflated loan amounts. These allegedly discriminatory loans cost the county tax money, because of foreclosed properties and depressed house values, the county claimed.
The bank denied the allegations and argued the county could not show the bank's lending practices, even if discriminatory, cost the county money.
Bank of America's subsidiaries, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, were also sued.
On Feb. 10, 2022, Judge Bucklo threw out the suit, finding the county's case "weak on many fronts" and the evidence was "uncontroverted" that the bank's policies and practices were based on "race-neutral criteria."
Bank of America now says the county should pay the bank's legal bills accrued from Nov. 1, 2020 to Oct. 31, 2021, the period when the case "undoubtedly" became "frivolous and without any factual or legal foundation." During that time, the case revolved around expert witness discovery and a summary judgment motion, the motion which was eventually granted in the bank's favor.
According to the bank, "Cook County continued to pursue this case even after it was clear it had no facts or evidence to support its broad allegations and imaginative legal theories." Further, the county "forced Defendants to engage in years of fact discovery, expert discovery, and summary judgment proceedings just to prove what the County already knew: it had no recoverable damages or injury."
In the bank's view, "The County filed its Complaint with far-fetched, though very serious, charges" and the bank has "grave doubts the County ever had a good faith factual basis to make such allegations."
The bank noted that during three years of discovery, the bank provided the county with 750,000 documents and furnished information on more than 350,000 loans covering almost 20 years from three corporate families, none of which led to "even a scintilla of evidence supporting the County's speculative claims."
The bank also used such words as "concocted," "dubious," "fanciful," "unreasonable," "frivolous," "distorted" and "unsound" to describe various aspects of the county's case.
Bank of America is defended by attorneys Matthew S. Sheldon, Thomas M. Hefferon, Levi Swank and Courtney L. Hayden, of firm of Goodwin Procter, of Washington, D.C., and Boston; and attorney Joseph Laurence Motto, of the Chicago-based Winston & Strawn.
Cook County has been represented by the following firms: Page Perry and Evangelista Worley, both of Atlanta; James D. Montgomery & Associates, and Wexler, Boley & Elgersma, both of Chicago; and Milberg, Coleman, Bryson, Phillips, Grossman, of Garden City, N.Y.