The debt claim behind the collection demand
CashCall’s case began with a question more basic than whether a collection notice was aggressive or a loan expensive: did the claimed repayment obligation exist under the applicable law? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged that CashCall and related defendants collected loans that were void or uncollectible under borrowers’ state laws. The federal deception theory rested on presenting those obligations as enforceable. The resulting litigation lasted well beyond the underlying lending programme and produced important decisions about restitution, recklessness and jury-trial waivers. [1, 2]
The case is historically substantial and also has a recent procedural development. After the Ninth Circuit affirmed the revised judgment and the Supreme Court declined review, the district court rejected another effort to obtain relief from the judgment on September 11, 2026. That ruling is a development in an existing case, not a new accusation or a new lending rule. It leaves a useful record of how contractual structure, business economics and litigation procedure interact. [1, 4]
A tribal-law clause and the economic arrangement
The Ninth Circuit’s May 23, 2022 opinion describes CashCall financing an entity operating on an Indian reservation, with CashCall purchasing the resulting loans shortly after origination. Loan agreements selected tribal law rather than the law of the borrower’s home state. The business objective was national lending without the state usury and licensing restrictions that otherwise affected the loans. CashCall, its owner J. Paul Reddam and affiliated companies subsequently faced the Bureau’s federal action. [2]
A choice-of-law clause identifies the law a contract purports to apply. It does not make that choice conclusive in every court. Here, the judicial analysis addressed the relationship between the transaction and the chosen law, borrowers’ home-state interests, and the economic substance of the lending arrangement. Treating the printed clause as the whole legal analysis would omit the very issues that made the arrangement vulnerable. The courts did not simply announce that any loan associated with a tribe was unlawful. [2]
The commercial mechanism matters independently of the label. An originator can appear on a contract while another party supplies capital, purchases receivables, takes substantial economic risk and collects repayments. Those functions affect who benefits and who bears losses. They also explain why the enforceability of a portfolio cannot be assessed solely from the name at the top of the original loan agreement. The CashCall findings concern the particular arrangement and applicable state laws, rather than a universal rule for every loan sale or lending partnership.
The federal case was about deceptive collection
The Bureau filed its complaint on December 16, 2013 and an amended complaint on March 21, 2014. The case moved to the Central District of California in September 2015. On August 31, 2016, the district court granted partial summary judgment for the Bureau, concluding that demanding and collecting payments on debts consumers did not owe was deceptive. This was a judicial liability finding, not merely a consent settlement containing untested allegations. [1]
The theory connected state-law invalidity to the federal prohibition on deceptive acts or practices. A payment demand ordinarily conveys that payment is legally due. If the underlying obligation is void, that representation can mislead even when the payment schedule accurately reproduces the contract. Accuracy of the arithmetic does not resolve accuracy of the entitlement. This makes the case relevant to servicing and collection as well as loan origination. [2]
The distinction also limits what can be inferred. The federal case did not establish a general federal interest-rate cap for all consumer loans. Nor did it establish that a lender loses every collection right whenever a borrower alleges a state-law defect. The judgment depended on legal conclusions about the specified loans and states, followed by a federal deception analysis. Those steps cannot be replaced by the broad proposition that high rates alone are fraud.
Liability survived while remedies changed
After a remedies trial, the district court’s January 19, 2018 findings imposed a $10.28 million civil penalty but denied restitution and an injunction. Both sides appealed. On May 23, 2022, the Ninth Circuit affirmed liability, vacated the penalty and the denial of restitution, and remanded for reconsideration. The appellate ruling required a higher-tier penalty analysis for the later period of conduct and rejected the reasons given for denying restitution. [1, 2]
The court distinguished the early period from conduct beginning in September 2013. By the latter point, the danger that the collection activity violated the law was sufficiently obvious for recklessness. This is a more precise conclusion than saying that every act throughout the programme was knowingly illegal. The opinion also rejected Reddam’s reliance-on-counsel defense to the relevant personal-liability finding. Legal advice was part of the evidence, but did not insulate continued collection from later information undermining the arrangement. [2]
On February 10, 2023, the district court ordered $33,276,264 in civil penalties and $134,058,600 in restitution. These are separate remedies in the revised judgment. They are not amounts to add to the superseded $10.28 million penalty as though all three were independent awards. The penalty punishes and deters; the restitution calculation concerns unjustly collected amounts. Neither figure, by itself, establishes the amount already distributed to borrowers. [1, 3]
Restitution, revenue and operating expenses
The second appeal focused heavily on what kind of restitution the Bureau sought. CashCall argued that an equitable remedy should be limited by the principles governing net profits, including the Supreme Court’s decision in Liu v. SEC. The Bureau maintained that the requested relief was legal restitution reflecting consumer losses. The Ninth Circuit’s amended April 24, 2025 opinion affirmed the judgment and treated substance, rather than the agency’s earlier label, as central to characterizing the remedy. [3]
The calculation did not amount to a simple award of every dollar ever lent. The appellate court described an approach based on unjust gains from collected interest and fees, with the Bureau first making a reasonable approximation and the defendants then able to show overstatement. It upheld the district court’s use of net revenues in the circumstances. That reasoning is specific to the statutory remedy and record, not a general accounting rule that all revenue is profit. [3]
The business significance is that operating costs do not automatically reduce a repayment obligation imposed for unlawful collections. A firm may have spent money acquiring customers, funding operations and servicing accounts while still owing relief measured differently from its accounting profit. Conversely, describing the award as revenue-based does not establish that ordinary principal advanced was ignored in every calculation. The operative opinion and judgment, rather than an informal gross-revenue comparison, define the recovery.
Why the jury argument did not reopen the trial
CashCall initially requested a jury but later expressly agreed to waive that right and participated in a bench trial. In the second appeal it argued that legal restitution carried a Seventh Amendment jury-trial right. The Ninth Circuit assumed, without deciding, that such a right existed and held that CashCall had waived it. The company understood the substance of the requested relief even though it disputed the correct legal characterization. [3]
This is not a holding that jury rights are irrelevant in consumer-finance enforcement. It illustrates that a constitutional procedural right and the preservation of that right are different issues. The court did not need to resolve every possible implication of SEC v. Jarkesy because the waiver supplied a narrower ground. An article that attributes a sweeping rejection of jury trials to this decision would overstate it.
Litigation chronology therefore changes the meaning of a legal argument. A party may have an argument about the appropriate forum or remedy yet encounter a prior waiver, a final judgment or the limited standards for reopening one. A later doctrinal development does not necessarily restart the case. These constraints help explain why enforcement disputes can turn on both the underlying conduct and decisions made years earlier in litigation.
The 2026 attempts to obtain further relief
The Supreme Court denied CashCall’s petition for certiorari on March 2, 2026, according to the Bureau’s case record. Denial of review leaves the lower-court outcome in place; it is not a new Supreme Court endorsement of every part of the reasoning. CashCall then filed a Rule 60(b) motion on July 8, 2026 seeking relief from the post-remand judgment. The district court denied that motion on September 11. [1, 4]
The September order found that CashCall had not established entitlement to relief under the invoked provisions of Rule 60(b). It is a short order concerning reopening a judgment, not a new full trial on the loan programme. The order also states that the amended judgment had not been satisfied, despite payment of the original penalty. It does not establish that subsequent collection or distribution steps have been completed. Status should therefore be described as a judgment sustained through these proceedings, with the latest identified reopening attempt denied. [4]
What the case explains about lending economics
CashCall’s long sequence exposes a mismatch between the apparent value of a receivable and the legal right to collect it. A contractual balance can generate expected revenue in a model while its enforceability is disputed. If enforceability fails, the loss may extend beyond future interest to repayment of amounts previously collected and separate civil penalties. That is a different risk from ordinary borrower default, where a valid debt remains but the customer cannot pay.
The case also shows why redress and enforcement totals require disciplined dates. The original penalty was replaced; restitution appeared only after appeal and remand; and a final award is different from completed consumer recovery. Keeping those distinctions visible produces a more useful account than a single sensational total. At its core, the case is about the legal foundation of a payment demand and the consequences when a financial business continues collecting after that foundation has become untenable.
Sources
- CFPB case record, updated September 17, 2026Official sourceBack to text: ↑1↑2↑3↑4↑5↑6
- Ninth Circuit first appeal, May 23, 2022Official source · PDFBack to text: ↑1↑2↑3↑4↑5↑6
- Ninth Circuit order and amended opinion, April 24, 2025Official source · PDFBack to text: ↑1↑2↑3↑4
- District court order denying judgment relief, September 11, 2026Official source · PDFBack to text: ↑1↑2↑3