Peter N. Cubita is one of the leading consumer financial services attorneys in the country, having practiced in the area for more than 30 years. His experience is wide-ranging, encompassing regulatory compliance, transactional, class action litigation, and government enforcement matters, with extensive experience in the motor vehicle retail finance and leasing areas. Before joining Ballard Spahr, Peter worked as an in-house attorney at Ally Financial Inc. and previously was in private practice at a major law firm.
Peter developed the first generation of retail installment sale contracts and vehicle lease agreements for the retail sales finance and retail leasing programs of the captive auto finance company of a major foreign automaker. In addition to his regulatory compliance experience, Peter has substantial experience in class action litigation and government enforcement matters involving a wide variety of consumer financial services issues.
His advocacy efforts in the litigation context have yielded seminal appellate decisions in cases presenting novel issues of consequence to the financial services industry. For example, Peter successfully briefed and argued the appeal in Perrone v. GMAC, which resulted in the first appellate decision to analyze whether detrimental reliance is required to recover actual damages for TILA disclosure violations. He also represented GMAC in connection with its interlocutory class certification appeal in Coleman v. GMAC, which resulted in a seminal holding that compensatory damages under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act are not recoverable by a Rule 23(b)(2) class, and in the subsequent district court proceedings. While in-house at Ally, Peter co-authored briefs that resulted in significant decisions holding that negative equity on a trade-in vehicle financed under a retail installment sale contract is a “purchase-money obligation” protected from cramdown by the “Hanging Paragraph” of the Bankruptcy Code.
