The true definition of "push back"...

Builders Sue Banks That Pull Financing as Construction Projects Lie Unfinished:

Lenders are being sued by builders who say the banks have unfairly cut off their construction financing, stopped their projects midstream and forced their companies to the brink of bankruptcy. “Lender liability lawsuits are coming. It’s only just beginning,” says Michael Hackard, a lawyer in Sacramento, Calif., who focuses on real-estate law. “There are going to be builders who argue that the lender forced me into insolvency by not acting in good faith.” Developer John Thomas says he had nearly finished building a 222-unit condominium and hotel project in Stockton, Calif., when his lender, First Banks Inc.’s Missouri-based First Bank, wouldn’t release the final $6 million from his $40 million construction loan. As a result, Thomas’s lawyer says, liens have piled up against the project, the condo units haven’t been completed and the hotel has been taken over by a receiver. “If banks want to get out of residential lending, that’s fine; let’s sit down and figure it out. But that isn’t being done. The rug is literally being pulled from under us and games are being played,” says Mick Pattinson, chief executive of builder Barratt American and a member of a group of 30 California builders who have been meeting in recent weeks to discuss ways to push back against the banks. Pattinson says Bank of America Corp. froze his $100 million credit line for seven months, while ordering a new appraisal of his properties. During that time, Pattinson says, his company paid down its credit line by $30 million, but then stopped making payments in March when he realized the bank was never going to unfreeze the loan. Pattinson says that “after seven months, this country boy figured they weren’t going to allow us to use the credit line. I said, ‘No functioning line, no interest.’” (www.wsj.com) Wall Street Journal Online (7/23/08); Michael Corkery