Fuller v. First Franklin Financial Corp

In Fuller v. First Franklin Financial Corp. (2013) 216 Cal.App.4th 955, the couple purchased a home in 2006 and sued the lenders in 2010 for misrepresentation and fraudulent concealments regarding the appraisal and loan terms. (Id. at p. 958.) The Court of Appeal concluded that the statute of limitations did not start to run until late 2009 when the homeowners sought a loan modification and learned the true terms of their loan and appraisal. (Id. at pp. 963-966.) The court noted that "ordinarily a party to a contract cannot justifiably claim unawareness of the express provisions of the contract" but this was not the basis of the homeowners' claims. (Id. at pp. 964-965.) Rather, their claims were based on the mortgage broker's failure to explain that the terms of the loans might possibly increase the risk of foreclosure and the lenders' failure to inform the buyers that their appraisals were improperly based on outdated home sales, which differed in value, square footage, number of rooms, and other amenities to the home they purchased. (Id. at p. 959.) Nothing the homeowners received served as "any sort of 'red flag' as a matter of law putting plaintiffs on notice that their home was overvalued for the amount of indebtedness, that their 'best' loan was in fact more unfavorable than it needed to be, that their broker had siphoned off part of their closing costs, that they would not be able to seek to reduce their payments through refinancing, and that they would face foreclosure as a result." The court concluded that a demurrer was improper because the "allegations established with adequate specificity nondisclosures and misrepresentations from a broker . . . , and the absence of any circumstances to trigger plaintiffs' reasonable inquiry into available facts revealing the true nature of the loans." (Id. at p. 966.)