Quicken Loans filed a lawsuit late Friday against the U.S. departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development.
The suit comes in response to an investigation by the government into Quicken's Federal Housing Administration mortgage origination business. According to the lender, the Justice Department has obtained more than 85,000 documents from Quicken and now threatens its own lawsuit, "based on faulty analysis of a miniscule number of cherry-picked mortgages from the nearly 250,000 FHA loans the company has closed since 2007," the Detroit-based company said.
The preemptive move is a new approach for mortgage companies, who have been scrutinized heavily since the subprime failures that led to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession.
"It's a shame the DOJ would choose to attack the country's largest and highest-quality FHA lender providing government lending for homebuyers and home owners across all 50 states at the very time our nation needs expanded access to credit for middle-class Americans who benefit most from the FHA program," Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson said in a release.
“The Department of Justice generally does not comment on ongoing investigations,” a spokesperson said via email.
Quicken's statement also said that the government has interviewed "numerous" employees for "hundreds of hours of depositions" over the course of three years.
"The company was left with no alternative but to take this action after the DOJ demanded Quicken Loans make public admissions that were blatantly false, as well as pay an inexplicable penalty or face legal action," Quicken said in its release.
Quicken is one of the largest originators of FHA loans in the country.
