Arguing that the District Court applied the wrong standard, which led to the wrong approach, CCL, representing the City of Los Angeles, filed the opening brief in a case where the City has sought compensation from Wells Fargo Bank for lost tax revenues and for remediation costs as a result of the a practice of steering minority borrowers to more expensive and riskier loans than they were eligible for, resulting in foreclosures and other problems. A federal district court granted the bank summary judgment because it held that the government-insured and high-interest loans offered to these borrowers during the prior two years were not inherently discriminatory and therefore did not satisfy the statute of limitations.

The brief, largely written by CCL President Robert S. Peck, argued that the City’s claims were not tied to specific characteristics of particular loan categories, but to the practice of directing minorities to higher cost loans. As in a 2015 decision of the Eleventh Circuit won by CCL for the City of Miami, the bank’s switch from one type of loan to another did not render the practice “any less ‘continuing.’”

In addition to CCL, other counsel on the brief include Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California-Irvine law school, Joel Liberson of Tare Resources, the Hagens Berman law firm, and Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer.