Free Response to Motion - District Court of Colorado - Colorado

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

Page 1 of 12

Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camile Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

Page i
1

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO

2 3

Camille Melonakis-Kurz,

5 similarly situated
employees,
6

4 indi vidually and on behalf of other

Plaintiff,
7

vs.
8

Civil Action No. 03-MK-2485

9

Heartland Horne Finance,

Inc.,
10

Defendant.
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
The Videotaped Deposi tion of BRUCE ALVIN ROBERTS

November 22, 2005
8:40 a.m.

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts i 1/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

Page 30

1 mean, I don't know, there was a couple
2 3

programs there, too.
I have been there.

It's changed since

I can't really give

4 you how many programs, I mean just.
5

MS. NOVAK:

I don't want you

6 to guess either.
7

THE WITNESS:

Yeah, I don't

8 know, let's just say, I'm not going to
9 guess, to be honest with you, but I

10 know when I was there was three
11 nonconforming programs, there might have 12 been two nonconforming programs, so what

13 Heartland Banking supplied.
14 EXAMINATION
15 BY MS. HATFIELD:
16
Q.

How do you decide which program

17 best fits your customer's needs?
18

A.

That's not determined by me,

19 but that, well, I mean, that is
20 determined by me, but, actually, you 21 have to get pre-approved on it, so wi th
22 that, we had to send over pre-approvals,

23 and get those pre-approved first through
24
the banking division.

So, basically,

25 it's my job to kind of guide that

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1 person into a program depending on, you

2 know, whatever I thought the best fit
3 for, you know, the best financial, I
4 should say tool, or mortgage would fi t

5 for them.
6

MS. HATFIELD: We're now

7 going to go off the record.
8

THE VI DEOGRAPHER:

We will

9 now go off the record.
10 11
(WHEREUPON,

A Recess was held.)
THE VIDEOGRAPHER:

We are now

12 back on the record, please proceed.
13 EXAMINATION
14 BY MS. HATFIELD:
15
Q.

Thank you.

Right before our

16 break, we were talking about the
17 different types of loans that you had
18

available.

There are 15-year loans, 20-

19 year loans, 30- year loans, is that 20 correct?
21
22
A.
Q.

Yes.
And wi thin those, you had

23 mentioned earlier that there were three
24 types of nonconforming, or three types

25 of conforming?

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1

A.

Sure.

I mean there's a lot of,

2 there's programs there, there's a lot of

3 variations you can do. Like you
4 suggested, 30-year, 20-year, 15-year,
5

those are amortizations.
val ue .

SO/20s is what

6 you call to equal 100 percent of a
7

So I mean, there is a lot of

S different things you can, a lot of 9 different variations.
10
Q.

And you choose among these

11 different programs depending on what

12 your customer needs?
13
14

A.

I mean, I don't choose, we

submit for what they qualify for. I 15 mean, you know, I don't get to pick
16
wha t loan they get to take.

Their

1 7 credi t history and income get to choose

1 S what they qualify for.
19
Q.

But based on their credit

20 history, and maybe some of the things
21 they told you that they wanted, whether
22 it be a lower mon thly paymen t, or, some

23 of their goals is what I would call

24 them, you look at the programs and

25 decide which might fi t their needs?

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camile Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

Page 35

1 know, you could corne in and work until
2

then.

Branch hours were, I don't think

3 there were hours set, but I know most
4 everybody knew that it opened at nine
5
6

a.m.
know.

You could corne in earlier, you

But if you wanted to say set

7 hours, you know, nine to eight, that's a

8 big span.
9

Q.

Did you set hours for your loan

10 officers?
11
12

A.
Q.

Yes.
And what were the hours that

13 you told them they needed to work?
14

A.

They needed to be there nine
It was either, it

15

to, nine to seven.

16 was like, urn, that was something that me

1 7 as a manager, I, I guess it was kind of

18 like they had to put eight hours in. 19 All right. So, whatever your span of 20 eight hours, and an additional lunch
21 hour as well, so nine hours total.

22 Okay. That was the time that I was
23 there. I was there basically when the

24 doors opened until, I was the last one
25
ou t as a manager.

So, you know, if you

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1 Q. I have a document marked as
2 Exhibi t 2. I will have that handed to

3 you.
4

(WHEREUPON,

Exhibi t 2 was marked for

5 identification.)
6

Q.

I'm going to represent to you

7 that this is an employment agreement for

8 you?
9

A.
Q.

Sure.
Do

10

you

recognize it?

11
12 13
14

A.
Q.
bot torn

Yes, I do.

to the, in the right-hand corner, should be
you look
DEF

If

number
A.
Q.

15

07892. Okay.
The pages should all be

16
17

numbered consecutively through
A.
Q.

--

18

May I
DEF

ask a question?
Yes.
a

19 20 21
22

07908.

Defendant number, iS that what that ls saying?
A.
Q.

Is that

Yes, DEF is for Defendant.

If

23 you flip to DEF 07904.
24
A.
Q.

Okay.
Is that your signature on

25

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

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Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1 there?
2

A.
Q.

Yes, it is.

3

I f you flip through each of the

4 pages before that, are those your
5 initials on the bottom right corner?
6 7
8

A.
Q.

Yes.
Of each page?

A.

Yeah, those look to be all

9 mine.
10
Q.

I f you flip to DEF 07895. You

11 will see number 6.
12

MS. HATFIELD:

We need to

13 take a recess for a minute, please.
14
T HE V IDE OG RA P HER: We wi I I

15 now go off the record.
16 (WHEREUPON, An Off the Record Discussion
1 7 was held.)
18
THE VI DEOGRAPHER:
Thi s is

19 the beginning of tape two. We are now
20 21

back on the record.

Please proceed.

MS. HATFIELD:

Thank you.

22 EXAMINATION
23 BY MS. HATFIELD:
24
Q.

We have been talking about

25 conversations you had with your regional

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1 and wanted to use other lenders,

2 basically does that answer your

3 question? I don't know.
4

Q.

When you say people, you mean

5 loan officers?
6 7

A.
Q.

Loan officers, I'm sorry.

That's all right. And loan

8 officers could use, in the beginning,

9 other products?
10
A.

Yeah, when I started back in

11 2002, loan officers could basically corne

12 and go as they pleased, and they could
13 take their loans wherever they wanted.

14 Their goal was to close loans.

15 Basically, Heartland operated as a
16 broker operation, broker loans to

17 lenders.
18
Q.

So what factored into the loan

19 officer's decision, even yours as a loan

20 officer, about where to go?

21 A. That goes back to the process
22 of doing the loan, like where do you

23 get your best financial, I should say,
24 where is the best option for the

25 borrower, where is the easiest to get a

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

Page 108

1

A.
Q.

No.
Handing you a document to

2

3 refresh your recollection, and also, to
4

ask you a few questions.

There is only

5 one copy so I have to kind of lean over

6 here.
7
8

A.
Q.

Go ahead.

Sorry.
Uh-huh.

The borrower was Duane

9 Stewart?
10 11
12 13
A.
Q.

Do you remember this loan?
I do.

A.
Q.

Can you jus t wal k me through

14 the different fees, the application fee
15 to Heartland Horne Finance, which is line

16 812, what ls that?
17 18

A.

That would have been, should
I would

have been an origination fee.
the re .

19 have to say it's an error somewhere in
20
I don't see, I would be willing

21 to bet that there was an origination fee

22 on here, and for some reason, he might

23 have been short to close, and we had to
24 cu t some fee s on there. And leave some

25 application fee on there, that's

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camile Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1

Q.

Is there a set origination fee

2 tha t you charge?
3
4

A.
Q.

No.
Who decides what to charge?

5

A.

Well, management always wanted

6 to get at least two points, try to get

7 three percentage points, meaning one

8 percentage point of the dollar loan
9

amoun t .

Tha t compared to, that I would

10 believe, would be, I guess there is no
11

real policy on that.

I don't know.

12 There was never really any policy, you
13 just, obviously, you want to average

14 somewhere between two and three
15

percentage points on the loan. As a

16 loan officer, they know that the higher
17 their origination, excuse me, the higher

18 their fees are, the higher their
19
commission would be on the deal.

But

20 you have to be fair to the borrower, 21 and you have to be, you can't 22 discriminate against any of those
23 obviously, but it has to make sense.

24 For me to do a deal, a loan, it has to
25 make sense for my borrower, or there's,

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

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Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

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1 you know, it's going to be hard to do,

2 first of all.
3

Q.

So when you set your

4 origination fee, you said it makes sense

5 to the borrower, what kind of analysis
6 did you do to determine what origination

7 fee you would charge?
8

A.

Well, I was brought up

9 basically that, you know, do a service
10

first and you'll get paid for it.

If

11 you do it well enough, you're going to
12

really get paid for it.

So, in my

13 loans, I made sure I provided service to

14 my borrower, and then got paid for it. 15 Some loans, obviously on this one, I 16 remember me, I think I cut the fee on
17 this because this guy really needed help
18

and I had to help him out.

You know,

19 it is kind of like each loan is
20 different, it's just like each person iS
21

different.
free.

So it is, you know, no one
So, I mean,

22

works for free, all right.

23 I wouldn't do a loan absolutely for
24 25
I have, I don't think I would
You know, it is to

ever do that again.

Case 1:03-cv-02485-MSK-PAC

Document 345-29

Filed 02/16/2006

Page 12 of 12

Bruce Alvin Roberts 11/22/2005 Camille Melonakis-Kurz, et al v. Heartland Home Finance, Inc.

1 the discretion of the loan officer to
2 decide what the fees are. And Heartland
3 obviously wanted fees up, because that
4

Page 112

is how they make an income.

You know,

5 there was never policy on it, it was
6 always kind of rule of thumb to get,

7 you know, try for two, maybe one on the
8 front one, on the back, or ei ther
9

combination of how that worked out.

Or

10 three points if you could, was really
11
12

good.

But, it is hard because each
So, you know, it

person is different.

13 is actually, you don't really get to set
14
that fee.

The competition and
You

15

competitiveness out in the world.

16 know, if I put $7,000 on origination
17 fee, that may not go through because,

18 number one, my borrower's going to shop

19 me and the competi tion out there's going
20
21
to do it for less.

You really don't
It is

get to decide what your fee is.

22 kind of like, you know, it will weigh

23 itself out.
24
Q.

But you have, maybe range iS
You have a feel for

25

the wrong word.