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In a restoration of the actual definition of "kickbacks" as unearned charges and fees unrelated to the costs of insurance, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida became the latest court to firmly reject the revisionist definition of "kickbacks" as meaning only something called "divided loyalties" pushed by a panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Illinois. The Northern District's decision came in the recent case just reported on Westlaw of Edwards v. Green Tree Servicing, LLC, No. 5:15cv148-MW/GRJ, 2015 WL 6777463 (N.D. Fla. October 22, 2015).
The discredited revision of "kickbacks" came in Cohen v. American Security Insurance Co., 735 F.3d 601 (7th Cir. 2013). Under that definition of kickbacks-as-divided-loyalties, a lender and its mortgage servicers can never have divided loyalties taking kickbacks, as in that case under Illinois law which, research reveals, is about the only place, if any, where that particular re-definition is actually persuasive.
Please Read The Disclaimer. ©2015 by Dennis J. Wall, author of "Lender Force-Placed Insurance Practices" (American Bar Association 2015). All rights reserved.
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