President Obama’s contentious recess appointment of Richard Cordray, his nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sets the stage for legal challenges by mortgage lenders affected by actions of the CFPB. One interesting angle that has emerged in discussions with industry attorneys so far is the possibility that, sometime in the future, an aggrieved mortgage lender or servicer that becomes the focus of a CFPB enforcement action could block it by challenging the legality of the action. A company might be able to do so on the basis that the bureau may have acted unlawfully by utilizing an authority it really didn’t have because the CFPB director might not have been legally confirmed by the Senate. “There are issues with this appointment,” said Anne Canfield, executive director of Canfield & Associates, the first of which is the question of whether the Senate is in session or in recess.