Harris v. Homecomings Financial Services, Inc./Bank One

PS5-104 NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
___________
No. 09-3518
___________
PATRICE HARRIS,
Appellant
v.
HOMECOMINGS FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC./BANK ONE;
NOVASTAR MORTGAGE, INC.;
EXPRESS FINANCIAL SERVICES, INC.
____________________________________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Civ. No. 07-cv-00622)
District Judge: John P. Fullam
____________________________________
Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
April 22, 2010
Before: SMITH, FISHER and GARTH, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: April 26, 2010)
___________
OPINION
___________
PER CURIAM
Appellant Patrice Harris filed suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common
Pleas against Express Financial Services, NovaStar Mortgage, and Homecomings
Financial Services, and her civil action was removed by one of the defendants to United
States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 1332(a) and § 1441(a). Harris alleged in her Complaint that she purchased the property
located at 6114 North 8th Street in Philadelphia for $50,000 in December of 1998, with
an adjustable mortgage rate of 11.25%. Harris, a school children’s librarian with a law
degree, made all payments in accordance with the loan. In September of 2000, Harris
decided to refinance her mortgage. Unrepresented and without an agent of her own,
Harris agreed with one Mark L. Witmer of Express Financial Services to refinance at a
rate of 9.875%. NovaStar is the lender that refinanced Harris’s mortgage in September of
2000 and Express Financial Services was the company that conducted the closing. The
$44,000 loan, which was secured by a mortgage on the property, was sold almost
immediately to Homecomings, which began servicing the loan in November of 2000.
Harris alleged in her Complaint that she agreed only to a fixed rate of 9.875% and
she stated that she did not learn that she had an adjustable rate until she read a
Homecomings statement dated September 20, 2002, the two-year anniversary of the loan.
She began investigating the circumstances of her loan at that time and she alleged that she
learned that her name and initials were forged on certain of the loan documents. In her
Complaint, Harris asserted claims against NovaStar and Homecomings for violating the
federal Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”) (Count I), and the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade
Practices and Consumer Protection Law (“UTPCCPL”) (Count II). She also claimed
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fraudulent inducement (Count III), fraudulent misrepresentation (Count IV), unjust
enrichment (Count V), a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment (Count VI), and abuse of
process (Count VII). Harris complained that Express Financial and NovaStar engaged in
predatory lending practices by agreeing to refinance her mortgage at a fixed rate of
9.875%, and by altering the loan documents to reflect an adjustable rate loan. She alleged
that Homecomings interfered with her tax payment arrangement with the City of
Philadelphia, charged her unexplained charges and fees, and failed to account for her
payments properly. After an arbitration resulted in a ruling for the defendants, Harris
sought a trial de novo.
A two-day jury trial was conducted on June 8 and 9, 2009. Harris testified and
introduced certain documents into evidence, and she was cross-examined about those
documents and the defendant’s exhibits. At the close of Harris’s case, both
Homecomings and NovaStar moved for judgment as a matter of law. In support of this
motion, they argued that all of Harris’s claims other than the UTPCPL claim were time-
barred, that alternatively her unjust enrichment claim would not lie because the
relationships were contractual, and the UTPCPL claim failed because Harris could not
prove causation in light of the fact that the interest rate never adjusted above the rate she
claimed she was promised, and was not the reason she defaulted on the loan.
The District Court directed a verdict in favor of the defendants pursuant to Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 50. The court reasoned that almost all of the claims were barred
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by the statute of limitations, Harris did not establish causation, every document of record
established that this was an adjustable rate mortgage, and Harris’s forgery allegations had
no evidentiary support. Harris filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied by the
District Court in an order entered on July 24, 2009, the same day the court entered
judgment in favor of the defendants. The claims against Express Financial, which is in
bankruptcy, were dismissed without prejudice.
Harris appeals. She contends in her pro se brief that the District Court’s dismissal
of the jury under Rule 50 denied her constitutional right to a trial by jury, the court
wrongfully granted the Rule 50 motion, her unjust enrichment claim was not time-barred,
and her UTPCPL claim should not have been dismissed because she proved causation.
See Appellant’s Brief, at 13-19. Harris also alleged that the District Court exhibited bias
and impropriety in the court’s statements to her about her case. See Appellant’s Brief, at
25-29.
We will affirm. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We turn first to the
propriety of the District Court’s directed verdict pursuant to Rule 50 in favor of the
defendants. Our review of the District Court’s Rule 50 directed verdict is plenary. See
Gay v. Petsock, 917 F.2d 768, 771 (3d Cir. 1990). Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure permits a directed verdict when “a party has been fully heard on an issue and
there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party
on that issue.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 50(a). The rule requires a court to “review all the
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evidence in the record . . . [and in] doing so, draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the
nonmoving party . . . [without] mak[ing] credibility determinations or weigh[ing] the
evidence.” Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 149-50 (2000).
Rule 50(a) does not violate the right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment.
Galloway v. United States, 319 U.S. 372, 389-96 (1943).
The UTPCCPL was designed to prevent fraud; common law elements of justifiable
reliance and causation must be satisfied. See Tran v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 408 F.3d
130, 139-41 (3d Cir. 2005). The evidence established that, on June 10, 2002,
Homecomings notified Harris that she was in default because she was two months in
arrears. Supp. App. 258-263. At that point in time the interest rate on her loan had yet to
adjust and was still 9.875%. In a statement dated September 20, 2002, Homecomings
notified Harris that her interest rate was going to adjust in October of 2002 to the lower
rate of 8.125%. Supp. App. 198. Harris claimed that it was only then that she realized
she had an adjustable rate mortgage. In January of 2003, Homecomings again notified
Harris that she was in default. Supp. App. 264-69. In April of 2003, the interest rate
adjusted again, this time to 9.125%. Supp. App. 203. The last payment Harris made on
her mortgage (other than payments made in bankruptcy) was in September of 2003.
Supp. App. 208. In October of 2003, the interest rate adjusted back to the original rate of
9.875%. Supp. App. 209. Harris filed for bankruptcy on March 5, 2004 to forestall
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foreclosure proceedings.1 Thus, as of April of 2004, by which time Harris had long been
in default under the loan, the interest rate was not higher, nor had it ever been higher, than
the original, agreed-upon rate of 9.875%. Indeed, for much of that time it had actually
been lower. Whatever caused Harris to default on her loan, it was not the adjustable rate
feature of her mortgage. See Tran, 408 F.3d at 139-41 (UTPCCPL requires proof of
causation).
In addition, the loan note and mortgage, the originals of which were introduced as
evidence at trial, established that the loan had an adjustable interest rate feature that
would activate in accordance with the formula contained in the note after a two-year
period during which the rate would be fixed at 9.875%. Harris testified that Witmer
promised her a fixed rate of 9.875%, but the loan documents properly disclosed the terms
of the loan and the adjustable nature of the interest rate. Harris did not introduce any
documents containing fixed rate terms, and she signed a number of closing documents
identifying her mortgage loan as an adjustable rate loan, including an Adjustable Rate
Note. She offered no independent evidence that NovaStar altered any of the loan
documents, or forged her signature, and she did not credibly explain how her original
signature appeared on the adjustable rate loan documents without any evidence of
tampering. The evidence was not sufficient for a jury to reasonably find that Harris’s
1
The Chapter 13 case was dismissed at Harris’s request on September 22, 2006,
when she decided to pursue this civil action instead. Her home subsequently was sold in
foreclosure.
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signature on the loan documents was forged, or that the loan documents had been altered.
With respect to her specific claims against Homecomings, although Harris showed the
jury the Homecomings statements with the alleged improper fees and charges, she did not
submit any evidence to show that the fees or charges she objected to were fabricated or
otherwise unlawful. She did not prove that her payments were not properly applied, or
that she was billed multiple times for the same monthly payment. In short, the evidentiary
record created by Harris was insufficient to prove that any of her specific claims against
Homecomings had merit.
Moreover, each claim advanced by Harris apart from her UTPCPL and unjust
enrichment claims plainly was barred by the applicable statute of limitation even if the
“discovery rule” applied in her case. In order to equitably toll a statute of limitations, a
plaintiff must establish, in pertinent part, that the defendant actively misled her about her
claims or that some other extraordinary circumstance prevented her from pursuing her
claims. See Santos ex rel. Beato v. United States, 559 F.3d 189, 197 (3d Cir. 2009).
Moreover, she must demonstrate that she diligently pursued her claims. See McAleese v.
Brennan, 483 F.3d 206, 219 (3d Cir. 2007). Given the number of loan documents Harris
executed on September 25, 2000 evidencing the presence of an adjustable rate feature, we
doubt that she has demonstrated that she is entitled to tolling for the two years between
her loan closing and her alleged discovery of the adjustable rate in September or early
October of 2002.
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But even if the discovery rule applied, all but two of her claims accrued when she
received and read the Homecomings statement dated September 20, 2002 and admittedly
discovered that she had an adjustable rate. Harris initiated her civil action in the Court of
Common Pleas by filing a Praecipe for Writ of Summons on or after September 22, 2006.
The federal Truth in Lending Act has a one-year limitation period under 15 U.S.C.
§ 1640(e). Pennsylvania has a two-year limitation period for fraud (and conspiracy to
commit fraud) claims under 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 5524(7), a two-year limitation
period for abuse of process claims, see id. at § 5524(1), and a two-year limitation period
would also apply to a constitutional personal injury claim, see id. at § 5524(2); Wilson v.
Garcia, 471 U.S. 261 (1985) (state statute of limitations applies to actions under 42
U.S.C. § 1983). As such, no reasonable jury could have returned a verdict for Harris on
five of her seven counts, and the District Court thus properly directed a verdict in favor of
the defendants on these counts.
If the discovery rule applied, Harris’s unjust enrichment claim might well be
timely, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 5525(4) (providing for four-year limitation period), but a
directed verdict was nonetheless proper on this count as well because “the
quasi-contractual doctrine of unjust enrichment [is] inapplicable when the relationship
between parties is founded on a written agreement or express contract.” Benefit Trust
Life Ins. Co. v. Union Nat. Bank of Pittsburgh, 776 F.2d 1174, 1177 (3d Cir. 1985)
(quoting Schott v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 259 A.2d 443, 448 (Pa. 1969)). At trial,
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the defendants and Harris each introduced a number of contract documents, including the
Adjustable Rate Note and Mortgage, which plainly established that the relationship was
contractual.
In her motion for a new trial, Harris claimed that the District Court had no basis
for granting the Rule 50(a) directed verdict, and she repeated the arguments she had made
at trial. She further alleged that the court conferred with the defendants outside of her
hearing about the Rule 50 motion and made a racially biased remark. For the reasons
already stated, the directed verdict was proper and Harris was not entitled to a new trial
on that issue. With respect to her contentions of bias and impropriety, which she has
elaborated upon in her pro se brief, we have read the trial transcript and find no support in
it for these contentions. Notwithstanding Harris’s lack of familiarity with trial court
practice and procedure, the District Court gave her great latitude in presenting her case,
see, e.g., N.T., 6/8/09, at 73, 75, 99, and made every effort to understand her allegations.
Furthermore, the statement she claims proves racial bias can be found nowhere in the
transcript of the trial, and, in fact, the District Court recognized that “many African
American people are treated improperly in our society still,” N.T., 6/9/09, at 56. As to the
District Court’s use of an idiom in directing a verdict in favor of the defendants, N.T.,
6/9/09, at 56, we note that the comment followed directly after Harris made an incoherent
argument summarizing her essential allegations, see id. We conclude that the District
Court’s comment does not, on the record as a whole, establish bias. Cf. Liteky v. United
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States, 510 U.S. 540, 550-51 (1994) (judge is not recusable for bias or prejudice where
his knowledge and negative opinion were acquired during the course of proceedings and
upon completion of the evidence).2
For the foregoing reasons we will affirm the judgment of the District Court
directing a verdict in favor of NovaStar Mortgage and Homecomings Financial and order
denying Harris’s motion for a new trial. The appellees’ unopposed motion to file a timely
supplemental appendix is granted.
2
According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang 417
(1997), the phrase “out [or off] in left field” means “eccentric,” “absurd,” “nonsensical,”
“unreasonable,” “entirely wrong,” or “far from the mark.”
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