Woman can't intervene in whistleblower case against Bank of America, SDNY District Judge rules

by Ben Vernia | December 3rd, 2012

On November 28, District Judge Jed S. Rakoff denied the pro se motion of a homeowner to intervene in the qui tam suit – already intervened in by the Government – against Bank of America, U.S. ex rel. O’Donnell v. Bank of America. The woman argued that she should be permitted to intervene in the case, and that the bank had made “patently false” claims of title ownership regarding her home.

The Court concluded that whether interpreted as intervention as of right, or permissively, the motion was not well-placed. The would-be intervenor had failed to identify any federal statute which granted her a right to intervene, and in any event, her theory of liability was incompatible with that of the existing case, which was premised on the government’s, and not an individual’s loss. For the same reason, she had no claim for permissive intervention, because her claim shared no common question of law and fact with the main action, and would not “contribute to the development of the underlying suit or to the just and equitable adjudication of the Government’s claims for relief.”

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