Terry E. Sanchez

Sanchez advises leading companies like biopharmaceutical giant Amgen Inc. and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. A major focus last year and currently was for longtime client Wells Fargo & Co. as it faced discriminatory and predatory mortgage lending claims allegedly targeting minority borrowers in Los Angeles and other cities.

In July 2015, Sanchez obtained summary judgment for the bank from U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II in the case brought by the city of Los Angeles for violations of the federal Fair Housing Act. The city claimed that alleged predatory loans during the housing crisis beginning in 2004 resulted in vast numbers of foreclosures, decreased tax revenues to the city and increased demand for government services. City of Los Angeles v. Wells Fargo & Co., 2:13-cv-09007 (C.D. Cal., filed Dec. 5, 2013)

Hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. "The city was looking for damages related to every loan taken in LA by a minority borrower," Sanchez said.

"It was a statute of limitations deal," Sanchez said of his successful defense. "The complaint went back to 2004 during a period of non-prime lending that had stopped in 2008. Our position was that it was all irrelevant to the present. The city was at the end reduced to arguing that government program loans under the FHA were somehow discriminatory or predatory, and Judge Wright was having none of that."

Wright, an outspoken judge, in granting Sanchez' summary judgment motion, admonished the city for its "scorched earth approach." The city's lawyers had told him they would show things they could not show, Sanchez said. But the judge was evenhanded. "He was plainspoken in denying our original motion to dismiss, too," Sanchez said. "The plaintiffs had asserted a continuing violation theory that was enough to get by our dismissal motion, but summary judgment was a different story." Los Angeles officials have appealed Wright's dismissal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where it has been consolidated with an appeal of a win on similar claims by Bank of America Corp.

Earlier in 2015, Sanchez obtained dismissal of a suit with similar claims brought by the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is defending Wells Fargo in further suits by the Los Angeles city attorney under California law, and by the city of Oakland under the FHA. "The outcome in LA didn't discourage Oakland," Sanchez said. "It's unfortunate, but we'll deal with it."

— John Roemer