The legal table is set for a potentially pivotal court ruling on the mortgage industry’s use of marketing services agreements under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau submitted its “reply” brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in the agency’s dispute with PHH Mortgage. In its filing last week in PHH Corp., et al., v. CFPB, the bureau did not try to assert that all MSAs are unlawful or illegitimate, in and of themselves. “Parties to illegal kickback agreements are unlikely to put those agreements into writing. So those agreements may have to be identified based on circumstantial evidence and inference,” said the CFPB. “But RESPA Section 8(c)(2) clarifies when it is not proper to infer an illegal agreement. Illegality cannot be inferred merely because a party that received referrals makes payments to a party that made the referrals. “Moreover, such an arrangement is...