A real estate appraiser who claims he was placed on Chase Manhattan Bank’s black list because he refused to violate ethics requirements has been reinstated.
The appraiser, John Dingeman, says that he was put on the New York-based company’s black list in May 2012.
Dingeman alleges that he was banned from performing appraisals because he refused to release information that was considered confidential in an appraisal report he had completed for another lender.
Such a move would have been in violation of the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, or USPAP, according to an announcement from the American Guild of Appraisers.
Dingeman reportedly didn’t learn about his being blacklisted until October 2012, when his appraisal assignments dried up.
The guild said that Chase actually appealed to the Arizona Appraisal Board and tried to have Dingeman’s license revoked by claiming the appraisal report in question was substandard.
But the board found no fault with the report and dismissed the complaint.
Still, Dingeman remained on the black list.
So he sought help from the American Guild of Appraisers, the Office and Professional Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO.
A Chase representative allegedly denied that a black list even existed. So the AGA presented a copy of the list with Dingeman’s name on it.
Not long after that, Chase lost its AFL-CIO Union Privilege favored status and access to millions of OPEIU and AFL-CIO members.
“There were probably a number of reasons, many of which I am not aware of, behind the AFL-CIO’s decision to withdraw the Union Privilege favored status from Chase, but it was clear to me that Chase’s mistreatment of Dingeman did not help matters,” AGA President Peter Vidi said in the news release.
Chase relented, and Dingeman was reinstated.
