The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week retreated from an investigation into J.G. Wentworth, a year after suing the financial services firm in Philadelphia federal district court to force the company to disclose thousands of pages of documents.

The CFPB said on June 8 that it had withdrawn the administrative subpoena—known as a civil investigative demand—that it sent to J.G. Wentworth in September 2015 as part of an investigation into the company's practice of paying consumers for the rights to future income from annuities and legal settlements. The subpoena was formally withdrawn on June 1, according to papers the CFPB filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

“This action is therefore moot, and the court must dismiss it for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction,” CFPB enforcement attorneys wrote.

It's possible the CFPB has reissued or will issue a new demand for information from J.G. Wentworth. A CFPB spokesman declined to comment on Friday. J.G. Wentworth's lawyers in Washington at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr didn't immediately return messages seeking comment.

The CFPB has been no slouch in turning to the courts to enforce the agency's subpoenas, but it's rare that the agency would pull back one of its demands.

Last month, a federal judge in California ordered Future Income Payments to comply with a CFPB investigation into pension-advance products, in which consumers receive a lump-sum payment in exchange for a portion or all of their pension income. The company has appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The CFPB enjoyed similar success in Detroit, where a federal judge ruled in February that Harbour Portfolio Advisors, one of the nation's largest providers of seller-financed homes, must comply with the agency's investigative demands.

But the bureau has not gone undefeated. In April, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit spiked the bureau's attempt to squeeze information from the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which cleared the now-shuttered Corinthian Colleges chain of for-profit schools to receive federal student aid. The D.C. Circuit's decision upheld a federal judge's ruling that the CFPB lacked the authority to investigate the accrediting organization.

J.G. Wentworth's defense team at Wilmer, including partner Matthew Martens and senior associate Matthew Celestin, had dug in against the CFPB's demands. In an August court filing, J.G. Wentworth, based in Radnor, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, said it had been under investigation by the CFPB for more than two years and initially cooperated with the probe “in hopes that the bureau would quickly realize that it has no jurisdiction” over the company's business.

“Instead, the investigation has lumbered on for more than two years and at great expense to [J.G. Wentworth], as the company has produced to the bureau more than 40,000 pages of documents and three company representatives for testimony,” Celestin wrote.

Last month, J.G. Wentworth pushed back against the idea that the issuance of any new CFPB subpoena would be futile because J.G. Wentworth would not respond to that modified demand.

The agency's “staff has no basis to prejudge the administrative process. For one, JGW is not a recalcitrant party, having already provided over 40,000 documents and hearing testimony of multiple employees in response to earlier Bureau requests,” Celestin wrote in court papers. “And even if the parties are unable to negotiate the parameters of a response to a new CID—not a foregone conclusion—JGW has a statutory right to petition the director to modify or set aside the CID.”

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