Attorneys for both Ginnie Mae and Texas Capital Bank (TCB) are asking a magistrate judge overseeing their case about HECM tail collateral in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for an extension to decide on separate motions brought by both parties: one seeking a change of venue to a different court, and another seeking a partial summary judgment.
The move is a rare point of agreement between the two sides in the case, though they have each arrived at that agreement from two different points of view. TCB is seeking its partial summary judgment for the first count of its original court complaint, which alleges that Ginnie Mae violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) by extinguishing its first-priority liens over certain reverse mortgage collateral.
Ginnie Mae, on the other hand, is seeking to move the case to a court based in Dallas, contending that by filing the case in Amarillo instead, TCB violated a “forum selection clause” in its tail agreement with Reverse Mortgage Funding (RMF), the agreement at the center of the dispute.
The current deadline for TCB to respond to the forum change motion is July 8, while Ginnie Mae must respond to the partial summary judgment ruling by July 18. Neither have enough time to sufficiently respond to the claims of each, according to a court filing reviewed by HousingWire’s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD).
“The parties respectfully request a 14-day extension to respond to the motion to transfer venues and the motion for partial summary judgment, respectively,” the filing said. “The parties’ request this extension to ensure adequate time to review and respond to the Motions and do not submit this request for an improper purpose or delay.”
If granted by the magistrate judge, that would give TCB until July 22 to respond to the venue change motion, and government attorneys until Aug. 1 to respond to the summary judgment motion. Also included in the filing is a sample order granting the request that the judge may choose to execute.
TCB seeks “to confirm and protect its rights in tens of millions of dollars in collateral on which it has a first-priority lien but that [Ginnie Mae is] diverting to themselves and dissipating on an ongoing basis without any statutory right to do so — all in a context where this Court’s decision denying [Ginnie Mae’s] motion to dismiss rejected all of the justifications [they] have offered for their position,” said a prior court filing previously reviewed by RMD.
Meanwhile, the government contends that “TCB’s lawsuit ‘involve[s]’ both the tail agreement and loan documents […]. TCB was thus obligated to file this suit in Dallas County. TCB disregarded this obligation and chose to file in Amarillo, which has no connection to the litigation,” the government said in its venue change filing last month.
The U.S. Supreme Court previously established that forum selection clauses must be enforced. Despite the agreement being between TCB and RMF, the fact that the bank’s dispute with the government has to do with the tail agreement means that the clause is enforceable in this instance, government attorneys argue.
TCB initially brought its suit against Ginnie Mae in October 2023, alleging the government-owned company had “extinguished, in return for no consideration, TCB’s first priority lien on tens of millions of dollars in collateral” stemming from the [FHA]-sponsored [HECM] program.”
This was after Ginnie Mae allegedly turned to TCB in an effort to avoid “a catastrophic disruption of the HECM program.” In return for lending money to RMF, TCB said it received a first priority lien “on certain HECM collateral,” which the bank described as “critically important” since without it, the only collateral TCB could rely on was a bankrupt company in RMF.
In subsequent filings, Ginnie Mae denied the accusations outside of material facts related to executed agreements between all parties and the regulations governing the HMBS program. While Ginnie Mae sought to have the case dismissed, the presiding judge allowed the bulk of the case to continue and dismissed only small portions of the initial complaint.
Previously, Magistrate Judge Lee Ann Reno approved a prior extension request to better accommodate the discovery process in the case after it was unopposed.
