Better Home & Finance Defeats Wiretapping Lawsuit Filed Too Late

A homeowner waited too long to file a complaint accusing Better Home & Finance Holding Co. of tracking its website visitors’ activity without their consent, and the record didn’t show that the statute of limitations period should be extended, a federal judge ruled.

Plaintiff Elena Leanos made an account to file a loan application with Better Home around January 2022. She didn’t filed a proposed class action over Better Home’s use of online trackers for advertising purposes until September 2025, making her claims time-barred, according to the order from the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The claims the plaintiff asserted—both wiretap causes of action and ones under California’s constitution—had statutes of limitation that were two years or shorter, Judge Edward M. Chen said. He wasn’t persuaded that the deadlines should be extended because due diligence would’ve failed to discover Better Home’s alleged disclosures of her information to third parties Google and LinkedIn sooner.

Better Home’s privacy policy sufficiently disclosed that it would collect user information, the court said. To apply for a loan, the plaintiff would’ve been exposed to the privacy policy in a way that made it reasonably discoverable.

The link to the privacy policy “would likely fail the conspicuous notice test for online agreements to be contractually binding,” but the court said that didn’t matter.

The issue was “whether the Privacy Policy was reasonably discoverable by Plaintiff, not whether it was sufficiently conspicuous such that Plaintiff should be contractually bound by its contents,” the court said. Here a link to the privacy policy was reasonably available on every page of the site the plaintiff visited.

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP represented Better Home. Bursor & Fisher PA represented Leanos.

The case is Leanos v. Better Home & Fin. Holding Co., N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-07893, 4/9/26.