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Pioneer Commercial Funding v. American Financial Mortgage Corp.

Bank may not exercise automatic setoff against third-party funds placed in depositor's account by error; jury's $40.5 million punitive damage award resulted from passion and prejudice in light of counsel's repeated inflammatory allegations.

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OPINION

� 1 Appellant, CoreStates Bank, N.A. (Bank), *fn1 appeals from the judgment entered by the trial court on December 21, 2000, *fn2 following a jury verdict in favor of Appellee, Pioneer Commercial Funding Corporation (Pioneer). For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

� 2 The pertinent facts and procedural history of this case are as follows. Appellee, Pioneer, is a mortgage funding company, a warehouse lender. Pioneer had a business relationship with RNG Mortgage Services, Inc. (RNG), a California-based mortgage banker. A May 1997 agreement governing the business relationship provided that Pioneer would receive a security interest in the notes and mortgages obtained by RNG (the collateral) and in any proceeds of the notes and mortgages. In order to protect Pioneer’s interest in the notes, RNG ordinarily would endorse the notes in blank and deliver them to Pioneer, which in turn, delivered the notes to Bank One, Texas (Bank One). Bank One would then send the individual notes under bailee letters, *fn3 releasing them from its custody as they were paid by the ultimate secondary-market investors that purchased them. RNG “originated” mortgages, i.e., loaned money to home buyers and sold the resulting notes and mortgages to investors such as Pioneer. As a warehouse lender, Pioneer advanced money to RNG so that RNG could fund loans to homebuyers. On its part, Pioneer derived its funding from Bank One.

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