UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 19-1059

PHILLIP ALIG; SARA J. ALIG; ROXANNE SHEA; DANIEL V. SHEA, Individually and on behalf of a class of persons,

Plaintiffs - Appellees,

v. QUICKEN LOANS INC.; AMROCK INC., f/k/a Title Source, Inc., d/b/a Title Source Inc. of West Virginia, Incorporated,

Defendants - Appellants,

and DEWEY V. GUIDA; APPRAISALS UNLIMITED, INC.; RICHARD HYETT,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, at Wheeling. John Preston Bailey, District Judge. (5:12-cv-00114-JPB-JPM, 5:12-cv-00115- JPB)

Argued: October 27, 2020 Decided: March 10, 2021

Before NIEMEYER, WYNN, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges. Affirmed in part and vacated and remanded in part by published opinion. Judge Wynn wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge Floyd joined. Judge Niemeyer wrote a dissenting opinion.

ARGUED: Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER, LLP, Los Angeles, California, for Appellants. Deepak Gupta, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Helgi C. Walker, GIBSON, DUNN & CRUTCHER LLP, Washington, D.C.; William M. Jay, Thomas M. Hefferon, Brooks R. Brown, Keith Levenberg, Washington, D.C., Edwina B. Clarke, GOODWIN PROCTER LLP, Boston, Massachusetts, for Appellants. John W. Barrett, Jonathan R. Marshall, Charleston, West Virginia, Patricia M. Kipnis, BAILEY & GLASSER LLP, Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Gregory A. Beck, GUPTA WESSLER PLLC, Washington, D.C.; Jason E. Causey, James G. Bordas, Jr., BORDAS & BORDAS, PLLC, Wheeling, West Virginia, for Appellees.

2 WYNN, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs are a class of “[a]ll West Virginia citizens who refinanced” a total of 2,769 mortgages with Defendant Quicken Loans Inc. from 2004 to 2009, “for whom Quicken [Loans] obtained appraisals” from Defendant Amrock Inc., an appraisal management company formerly known as Title Source, Inc. (“TSI”). 1 J.A. 627. 2

Plaintiffs allege that pressure tactics used by Quicken Loans and TSI to influence home appraisers to raise appraisal values to obtain higher loan values on their homes constituted a breach of contract and unconscionable inducement under the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act. The district court agreed and granted summary judgment to Plaintiffs.

We agree with the district court that class certification is appropriate and that Plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment on their statutory claim. However, we conclude that the district court erred in its analysis of the breach-of-contract claim. Accordingly, we affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.

I.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Defendants, the record shows the following. 3

1 For ease of reference, we continue to refer to this entity as TSI throughout this opinion. 2 Citations to “J.A. __” and “S.J.A. __” refer, respectively, to the Joint Appendix and Sealed Joint Appendix filed by the parties in this appeal. 3 We consider only the evidence presented at the summary judgment stage. See Rohrbough v. Wyeth Laboratories, Inc., 916 F.2d 970, 973 n.8 (4th Cir. 1990) (declining to consider “several documents that were not before the district court when it considered

3 In refinancing mortgages for thousands of West Virginia homes during the class period, Quicken Loans asked potential borrowers to complete an application; sign a uniform deposit agreement authorizing Quicken Loans to “advance out-of-pocket expenses on [the borrower’s] behalf” for an appraisal, a credit report, or both; and provide a deposit averaging $