After the dust settled on all the actions the FDIC brought against the banks involved in the mortgage crisis and the FDIC established receiverships of these failed institutions, it began looking for other parties that may have contributed to the financial crisis. As receiver for the failed institutions, the FDIC has the ability to sue any professionals that may have played a role in the failure of the institutions now in receivership.1 Beginning in 2009, the FDIC did just that and commenced suing the directors, officers and other professionals of the financial institutions that failed.2 Among the professionals the FDIC began pursuing are the appraisers that valued the houses that defaulted to the banks during the housing crisis. The FDIC has begun suing these appraisers for their allegedly negligent appraisals in order to augment its recoveries for the banks for which it is a receiver.
In May 2011, the first big appraiser suits were the FDIC's simultaneous actions against two appraisal management companies (AMC), CoreLogic Inc. and Lender Processing Services (LPS).3 The role of the AMCs was to function as a middleman between the banks and the appraisers. The FDIC continued actively pursuing these professional liability cases. By August 2011, the FDIC had approximately "172 pending mortgage malpractice and fraud lawsuits against mortgage brokers, appraisers, attorneys, closing agents and title companies."4 As to appraisers specifically, since Jan. 1, 2007, the FDIC had identified approximately 500 individual appraisers that had submitted allegedly negligent appraisals.5 The FDIC alleged that these appraisals overvalued the subject properties and failed to use appropriate comparable sales for their evaluation.
