Legal

Federal Court Orders Scotiabank, Oriental to Produce Records for Half of USVI Borrowers in Hurricane Insurance Case

Nine years after Hurricanes Irma and Maria exposed a bitter dispute over force-placed insurance on Virgin Islands homes, a federal magistrate judge has ordered Scotiabank and its successor entities to turn over records covering half of a proposed class of borrowers — including people who never filed hurricane damage claims — as a long-running lawsuit moves deeper into discovery. In a September 12 order, U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Alan Teague granted in part a motion to compel filed by 11 Virgin Islands homeowners in Belardo et al. v. The Bank of Nova Scotia et al. The court ordered the defendants to produce a 50 percent sample of all residential mortgage borrowers in the territory who were charged for force-placed insurance between August 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018, rather than restricting the production to borrowers who made claims after the two hurricanes. The ruling is a significant procedural development in the proposed class action, but it is not a determination that Scotiaban...