R. Aaron Chastain

Listed in Business Alabama, Legal Elite 2025-2026 Listed in Mid-South Super Lawyers, "Rising Stars," Appellate, 2016-2020 Listed in Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch Banking and Finance Law, 2021-2025 Financial Services Regulation Law, 2021-2025 Litigation – Banking and Finance, 2021-2025 Appellate Practice, 2023-2025 Serve as national litigation managing counsel for a residential solar lender, directing defense strategy across a portfolio of several thousand active matters and reporting on exposure to the institutional lenders whose capital is committed to the loan book, including by engaging with state attorneys general and other significant counterparties in individual cases and enforcement actions. Serve as compliance counsel for major residential solar lenders and third-party-owned (TPO) product providers, advising on TILA, state consumer protection and disclosure statutes, payment regulations, and related compliance issues as those products are built and rolled out nationally — engaged at the design stage, before a product reaches a borrower. Represented a major mortgage lender and servicer, as first-lien holder, in dozens of Nevada appeals over homeowners’ association super-priority liens, litigation that determined whether the client’s liens survived HOA foreclosure sales — a litigation portfolio that remained pending in the state and federal courts in Nevada and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for over a decade (e.g., Bank of America, N.A. v. Soriano, No. 18-16595 (9th Cir. May 6, 2019); Bank of New York Mellon v. Sommerset Park Homeowners Ass’n, No. 19-16891 (9th Cir. Jan. 24, 2023)). Coordinated and personally argued nationwide consumer finance litigation under the FDCPA, RESPA, TILA, and state analogues, from Georgia to Arizona (e.g., Clark v. Chase Bank USA, N.A., 643 F. App’x 838 (11th Cir. 2016); Calcut v. Paramount Residential Mortgage Group, Inc., No. 24-764 (9th Cir. May 8, 2025)). Defends lenders and servicers in bankruptcy adversary proceedings and contested matters in bankruptcy court, including claim objections and litigation over the automatic stay and the discharge injunction. Served as lead appellate counsel in cases involving significant unsettled questions of law, including a ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court on when a nonjudicial foreclosure is legally complete (Ex parte GMAC Mortgage, LLC, 176 So. 3d 845 (Ala. 2013)) and a more recent ruling interpreting a state tax underpayment statute (Indorama Ventures Xylenes & PTA, LLC v. Morgan County Board of Equalization, 401 So. 3d 230 (Ala. 2024)). Served as lead trial counsel for an Alabama manufacturer in a jury trial against a foreign equipment manufacturer and its U.S. distributor over defective industrial laser equipment (Redline Steel, LLC v. Nukon Lazer Makine Metal Sanayi ve Tic, A.S., No. 5:19-cv-01445-MHH (N.D. Ala.)). After winning the pretrial fights over personal jurisdiction and summary judgment, tried the case to a defense verdict on the opposing manufacturer’s counterclaim and a plaintiff’s verdict of $1.4 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages on the client’s breach of contract and fraud claims. Served on the trial and appellate teams in the case setting the falsity standard for hospice claims under the False Claims Act (United States v. AseraCare, Inc., 938 F.3d 1278 (11th Cir. 2019)). Served on the appellate team in the first decision extending equitable mootness to a Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy (Bennett v. Jefferson County, Alabama, 899 F.3d 1240 (11th Cir. 2018)).