MA State Law Assignment 1 of 2

CASE STUDY

Shane has been an MLO with an origination company called Liberty Loans for about two years, and he has made a lot of friends in that time, because he is one of the good guys. And, you could even say that he is a bit of pleaser. He likes to help his friends and co-workers when they need help, and pleasantly surprise them when he can with some random act of kindness – especially when they are down on their luck.

Let’s look at a couple of recent events as examples.

An applicant named Camille came in to Liberty Loans recently to apply for a mortgage loan, and she met with Shane. And, even though he didn’t really have time to meet with her, Shane was very friendly and helpful. He took her information and documentation, and filled out the application. Then, he sent her on her way.

Shane was short on time because he was working on a surprise for Liberty Loans’s owner, Bev. See, Bev had been on vacation for two weeks and Shane was working on cleaning up the company’s files as a surprise for her when she returned to the office. And, she was due back in two days!

Sure, there might be a little ambition mixed in to his motives, but Shane really is just that much of a pleaser. He likes to make people happy – which is certainly why he passed Camille’s loan off to his co-worker Fred.

Here’s what happened:

An hour or so after Camille left, Fred shuffled over to Shane’s desk and slumped into a chair. Fred was down because he had just gotten notice from the commissioner that his license had been suspended because of a complaint from a former client.

“I can’t afford not to have a job!” Fred said. “I’ve got mouths to feed.”

Ever the good helper, Shane grabbed Camille’s file and tossed it on the desk in front of Fred, and said, “Here, take this.”

“No,” Fred said, “I can’t take money out of your pocket. I’ll figure something out.”

“Look,” Shane said, “I really don’t even have time to look after that file the way I should, so you would be doing me a favor.”

“Yeah, but I can’t have my name and ID going out on any loans right now, anyway,” Fred said.

“Just use mine,” Shane replied. “It’s already on there, and nobody has to know. Soon, you’ll be back on your feet and no one will the wiser.”

“Thanks, man,” Fred said. “You’re one of the good ones.”

Whether the complaint against Fred was valid or not, he did a pretty good job with Camille’s loan. Sure, there was the appraisal check that she had erroneously sent to the wrong address, but Fred straightened that out. Her loan went on to close a little ahead of schedule, Fred made some much-needed money, and Shane’s name was not tarnished in the process. Everybody won!

But let’s go back in time a little, back to when Shane gave Fred Camille’s loan to take care of. Shane had Camille’s loan off his plate, so he could focus on his covert “spring cleaning” of Liberty Loans’ files. He was keeping the project as quiet as he could because he wanted it to be a surprise for Bev. So, he told as few people as possible about it.    

The good news was that, over time, Shane and his colleagues had amassed quite a roster of clients. They had amassed so many, in fact, that they no longer had room in the office for all of the hard copies of their files. Even the company hard drives were filled to the brim with mostly unique files. It is a good problem to have!

Shane’s first move was to separate out the files that were more than three years old (the cutoff for file retention in Massachusetts). He shredded and discarded any hard copies of files that were older than that, and deleted any files that were beyond that age. But that did not make as room either in the office or on the hard drives as he had expected.

So, he decided to rent a secure storage unit to pack away hard copy files that were at least a year old, and he bought four more external hard drives to make more virtual room for digital files. Sure, all of this was on his dime, but he figured Bev would be really happy with the job and the company would probably reimburse him for everything, anyway. And, even if they didn’t, Shane could shoulder some of the burden. After all, Bev and Liberty Loans had been good to him, and he felt he owed them.

Now, in the space below, take some time to answer this question:

Coupling the details of the above case study with what you know about the Massachusetts state law from this section of the course, what would you have done differently from Shane and/or Fred? 

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