Litigation Related to the Collapse of Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.

On October 3, 2013, just prior to trial, Compass Lexecon’s client, Deloitte & Touche LLP (Deloitte) settled multiple lawsuits in Florida state court in which both Deutsche Bank and the now-bankrupt entity Ocala Funding (Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.’s (TBW) commercial paper conduit) were seeking billions in damages from Deloitte for failing to detect a criminal fraud carried out by the former executives of TBW and Ocala Funding. Plaintiffs claimed that Deloitte was “grossly negligent” in its audits of TBW from 2002 until 2009 because it did not discover a collusive fraud perpetrated by TBW and Ocala Funding executives in conjunction with TBW’s bankers at Colonial Bank. Both TBW and Colonial Bank declared bankruptcy in August 2009 after Deloitte withdrew from the field and federal law enforcement raided TBW’s headquarters. Compass Lexecon supported structured finance expert Christopher Culp, who testified in deposition about the structure and operations of the Ocala Funding assetbacked commercial paper conduit and the roles of various entities involved in that structure. Compass Lexecon also supported damages expert Bradford Cornell, who rebutted Plaintiffs’ multi-billion dollar damages claims in deposition testimony, and accounting expert Gordon Klein, who testified in deposition about on balance-sheet and off-balance sheet accounting for the sale of mortgage loans. We worked with John Hughes, Christopher Landgraff, Mark Levine and others at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP, as well as Patricia Gorham, Amy Rudolph, and others at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP. The Compass Lexecon team that supported our experts included Peter Clayburgh, Elisabeth Browne, John Hirshleifer, May Huang, and others in our Pasadena office, as well as George Hickey in our Chicago office.