Wells Fargo Lawyers Reprimanded in Home Lending Racial Bias Case

Attorneys for Wells Fargo & Co. were admonished at a contentious Thursday hearing by a San Francisco federal judge who said the bank must pay for the costs of a deposition that it canceled at the very last minute in a sweeping mortgage lending discrimination case.

“Don’t do this again,” Judge James Donato told Wells Fargo’s attorney Ava Lias-Booker of McGuire Woods LLP. “You’re professionals. You know how to be professionals.”

At the hearing, which at times involved heated exchanges between the attorneys, Donato questioned why the parties haven’t been getting along. When Lias-Booker and the plaintiff’s lead attorney Dennis ...