In Hagood v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., a borrower sued a lender for several claims, including breach of fiduciary duties. No. A-17-CA-00784-SS, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165943 (W. D. Tex. October 6, 2017). The defendant filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the district court granted same:

Without providing details, Plaintiff contends Defendants breached their fiduciary duties to him. However, “[u]nder Texas law, a mortgage lender or servicer generally does not owe a fiduciary duty to a borrower.” Plaintiff has failed to allege extraordinary circumstances giving rise to a fiduciary duty owed to him in this case. To the extent Plaintiff relies on fiduciary duties between Defendants themselves, such claims also fail because Plaintiff himself was owed no duty.

Id.

In Adams v. United States Bank, N.A., a borrower sued a former lender for breaching fiduciary duties in assigning the loan to another lender. No. 3:17-cv-723-B-BN, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165378 (N. D.Tex. October 1, 2017). The plaintiff contended that the first lender breached a fiduciary duty by either assigning the loan to the new lender or selecting it as the mortgage servicer because the first lender had “knowledge of the pattern and practice of [U.S. Bank’s] disregard of applicable law in the servicing of mortgage loans, and should not have attempted to assign ownership and/or servicing of the Loan to [U.S. Bank], thus jeopardizing Plaintiff’s ownership and use of the Property.” Id. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the magistrate recommended that it be granted:

Texas recognizes two types of fiduciary relationships. “The first is a formal fiduciary relationship,” such as “the relationship of an attorney-client, principal-agent, or trustee-beneficiary relationship.” The second is an informal fiduciary relationship — that is, a confidential relationship “where one person trusts and relies on another, whether the relation is a moral, social, domestic or purely personal one.” The Texas Supreme Court has recognized that “confidential relationships may arise not only from the technical fiduciary relationships such as attorney-client, trustee-cestui que trust, partner and partner, etc. – which as a matter of law are relationships of trust and confidence — but may arise informally from moral, social, domestic or purely personal relationships.” “The existence of the fiduciary relationship is to be determined for the actualities of the relationship between the parties involved.” Texas courts have consistently held that the mortgagor-mortgagee relationship is not a special relationship that generally gives rise to a fiduciary duty.

. . .

Courts have therefore only entertained the notion that a mortgage lender or service might owe a mortgagee a fiduciary duty where its relationship to the mortgagee was such that the mortgagee could reasonably expect the lender or service to act in his or her best interest. “‘[A] person is justified in placing confidence in the belief that another will act in his or her best interest only where he or she is accustomed to being guided by the judgment or advice of the other party, and there exists a long association in a business relationship as well as personal friendship.’” The parties’ special relationship must also have existed prior to and apart from the agreement in the suit.

Ms. Adams alleges that Guild breached a fiduciary duty to her by either assigning the Loan to U.S. Bank or selecting it as the mortgage service even though it knew of U.S. Bank’s alleged issue with complying with the law. But she fails to provide any explanation in her complaint or in her brief as to why she was “justified in placing confidence in the belief that” Guild would act in her best interest in the first place. She has not suggested that she had some long-standing relationship with Guild — separate from its relationship to the Property. Nor is there any other indication in her pleadings that Ms. Adams had some objective reason to believe that she would be justified in placing her confidence in Guild or its employees to act in her best interest. The State Court Petition, at most, suggests that Ms. Adams may have had some subjective,  unspecified belief that she could trust Guild. But Plaintiff’s “subjective trust and feelings of trust and confidence [are] not … enough to create a fiduciary relationship.”

Ms. Adams’s claim for breach of fiduciary duty should be dismissed. But — because it is not yet clear that Ms. Adams has pleaded her best case — the dismissal should be without prejudice.

Id. Therefore, the magistrate recommended that the district court grant the motion to dismiss without prejudice.

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Photo of David Fowler Johnson David Fowler Johnson

[email protected]
817.420.8223

David maintains an active trial and appellate practice and has consistently worked on financial institution litigation matters throughout his career. David is the primary author of the The Fiduciary Litigator blog, which reports on legal cases and issues impacting the fiduciary…

[email protected]
817.420.8223

David maintains an active trial and appellate practice and has consistently worked on financial institution litigation matters throughout his career. David is the primary author of the The Fiduciary Litigator blog, which reports on legal cases and issues impacting the fiduciary field in Texas. Read More

David’s financial institution experience includes (but is not limited to): breach of contract, foreclosure litigation, lender liability, receivership and injunction remedies upon default, non-recourse and other real estate lending, class action, RICO actions, usury, various tort causes of action, breach of fiduciary duty claims, and preference and other related claims raised by receivers.

David also has experience in estate and trust disputes including will contests, mental competency issues, undue influence, trust modification/clarification, breach of fiduciary duty and related claims, and accountings. David’s recent trial experience includes:

  • Representing a bank in federal class action suit where trust beneficiaries challenged whether the bank was the authorized trustee of over 220 trusts;
  • Representing a bank in state court regarding claims that it mismanaged oil and gas assets;
  • Representing a bank who filed suit in probate court to modify three trusts to remove a charitable beneficiary that had substantially changed operations;
  • Represented an individual executor of an estate against claims raised by a beneficiary for breach of fiduciary duty and an accounting; and
  • Represented an individual trustee against claims raised by a beneficiary for breach of fiduciary duty, mental competence of the settlor, and undue influence.

David is one of twenty attorneys in the state (of the 84,000 licensed) that has the triple Board Certification in Civil Trial Law, Civil Appellate and Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Additionally, David is a member of the Civil Trial Law Commission of the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. This commission writes and grades the exam for new applicants for civil trial law certification.

David maintains an active appellate practice, which includes:

  • Appeals from final judgments after pre-trial orders such as summary judgments or after jury trials;
  • Interlocutory appeals dealing with temporary injunctions, arbitration, special appearances, sealing the record, and receiverships;
  • Original proceedings such as seeking and defending against mandamus relief; and
  • Seeking emergency relief staying trial court’s orders pending appeal or mandamus.

For example, David was the lead appellate lawyer in the Texas Supreme Court in In re Weekley Homes, LP, 295 S.W.3d 309 (Tex. 2009). The Court issued a ground-breaking opinion in favor of David’s client regarding the standards that a trial court should follow in ordering the production of computers in discovery.

David previously taught Appellate Advocacy at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law located in Fort Worth. David is licensed and has practiced in the U.S. Supreme Court; the Fifth, Seventh, and Eleventh Federal Circuits; the Federal District Courts for the Northern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas; the Texas Supreme Court and various Texas intermediate appellate courts. David also served as an adjunct professor at Baylor University Law School, where he taught products liability and portions of health law. He has authored many legal articles and spoken at numerous legal education courses on both trial and appellate issues. His articles have been cited as authority by the Texas Supreme Court (twice) and the Texas Courts of Appeals located in Waco, Texarkana, Beaumont, Tyler and Houston (Fourteenth District), and a federal district court in Pennsylvania. David’s articles also have been cited by McDonald and Carlson in their Texas Civil Practice treatise, William v. Dorsaneo in the Texas Litigation Guide, and various authors in the Baylor Law ReviewSt. Mary’s Law JournalSouth Texas Law Review and Tennessee Law Review.

Representative Experience

  • Civil Litigation and Appellate Law