(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2014 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

JESINOSKI ET UX. v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, 

INC., ET AL. 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT 

No. 13–684. Argued November 4, 2014—Decided January 13, 2015 

Exactly three years after borrowing money from respondent Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., to refinance their home mortgage, petitioners

Larry and Cheryle Jesinoski sent Countrywide and respondent Bank 

of America Home Loans, which had acquired Countrywide, a letter

purporting to rescind the transaction. Bank of America replied, refusing to acknowledge the rescission’s validity. One year and one day

later, the Jesinoskis filed suit in federal court, seeking a declaration

of rescission and damages. The District Court entered judgment on

the pleadings for respondents, concluding that a borrower can exercise the Truth in Lending Act’s right to rescind a loan, see 15 U. S. C. 

§1635(a), (f), only by filing a lawsuit within three years of the date

the loan was consummated. The Jesinoskis’ complaint, filed four 

years and one day after the loan’s consummation, was ineffective. 

The Eighth Circuit affirmed. 

Held: A borrower exercising his right to rescind under the Act need only 

provide written notice to his lender within the 3-year period, not file

suit within that period. Section 1635(a)’s unequivocal terms—a borrower “shall have the right to rescind . . . by notifying the creditor . . . 

of his intention to do so” (emphasis added)—leave no doubt that rescission is effected when the borrower notifies the creditor of his intention to rescind. This conclusion is not altered by §1635(f), which 

states when the right to rescind must be exercised, but says nothing 

about how that right is exercised. Nor does §1635(g)—which states 

that “in addition to rescission the court may award relief . . . not relating to the right to rescind”—support respondents’ view that rescission is necessarily a consequence of judicial action. And the fact that 

the Act modified the common-law condition precedent to rescission at 
 

 

2 JESINOSKI v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC. 

Syllabus 

law, see §1635(b), hardly implies that the Act thereby codified rescission in equity. Pp. 2–5. 

729 F. 3d 1092, reversed and remanded. 

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. 
 

 

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Cite as: 574 U. S. ____ (2015) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 13–684 

LARRY D. JESINOSKI, ET UX., PETITIONERS v.
 

COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC., ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
 

[January 13, 2015]

 JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court. 

The Truth in Lending Act gives borrowers the right to 

rescind certain loans for up to three years after the transaction is consummated. The question presented is whether 

a borrower exercises this right by providing written notice to his lender, or whether he must also file a lawsuit 

before the 3-year period elapses.

On February 23, 2007, petitioners Larry and Cheryle

Jesinoski refinanced the mortgage on their home by borrowing $611,000 from respondent Countrywide Home

Loans, Inc. Exactly three years later, on February 23,

2010, the Jesinoskis mailed respondents a letter purporting to rescind the loan. Respondent Bank of America 

Home Loans replied on March 12, 2010, refusing to 

acknowledge the validity of the rescission. On February

24, 2011, the Jesinoskis filed suit in Federal District Court 

seeking a declaration of rescission and damages.

Respondents moved for judgment on the pleadings, 

which the District Court granted. The court concluded 

that the Act requires a borrower seeking rescission to file

a lawsuit within three years of the transaction’s consum-
 

 

2 JESINOSKI v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

mation. Although the Jesinoskis notified respondents of 

their intention to rescind within that time, they did not 

file their first complaint until four years and one day after 

the loan’s consummation. 2012 WL 1365751, *3 (D Minn., 

Apr. 19, 2012). The Eighth Circuit affirmed. 729 F. 3d 

1092, 1093 (2013) (per curiam).

Congress passed the Truth in Lending Act, 82 Stat. 146,

as amended, to help consumers “avoid the uninformed use

of credit, and to protect the consumer against inaccurate 

and unfair credit billing.” 15 U. S. C. §1601(a). To this 

end, the Act grants borrowers the right to rescind a loan

“until midnight of the third business day following the 

consummation of the transaction or the delivery of the 

[disclosures required by the Act], whichever is later, by

notifying the creditor, in accordance with regulations of 

the [Federal Reserve] Board, of his intention to do so.”

§1635(a) (2006 ed.).* This regime grants borrowers an

unconditional right to rescind for three days, after which 

they may rescind only if the lender failed to satisfy the

Act’s disclosure requirements. But this conditional right

to rescind does not last forever. Even if a lender never 

makes the required disclosures, the “right of rescission

shall expire three years after the date of consummation of 

the transaction or upon the sale of the property, whichever 

comes first.” §1635(f). The Eighth Circuit’s affirmance in 

the present case rested upon its holding in Keiran v. Home 

Capital, Inc., 720 F. 3d 721, 727–728 (2013) that, unless a

borrower has filed a suit for rescission within three years 

of the transaction’s consummation, §1635(f) extinguishes

the right to rescind and bars relief. 

That was error. Section 1635(a) explains in unequivocal 

—————— 

*Following the events in this case, Congress transferred the authority to promulgate rules implementing the Act to the Consumer Finance 

Protection Bureau. See Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 

Protection Act, §§1061(b)(1), 1100A(2), 1100H, 124 Stat. 2036, 2107,

2113. 
Cite as: 574 U. S. ____ (2015) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

terms how the right to rescind is to be exercised: It provides that a borrower “shall have the right to rescind . . . 

by notifying the creditor, in accordance with regulations of 

the Board, of his intention to do so” (emphasis added). The 

language leaves no doubt that rescission is effected when 

the borrower notifies the creditor of his intention to rescind. It follows that, so long as the borrower notifies 

within three years after the transaction is consummated, 

his rescission is timely. The statute does not also require

him to sue within three years. 

Nothing in §1635(f) changes this conclusion. Although

§1635(f) tells us when the right to rescind must be exercised, it says nothing about how that right is exercised. 

Our observation in Beach v. Ocwen Fed. Bank, 523 U. S. 

410, 417 (1998), that §1635(f) “govern[s] the life of the 

underlying right” is beside the point. That case concerned 

a borrower’s attempt to rescind in the course of a foreclosure proceeding initiated six years after the loan’s consummation. We concluded only that there was “no federal 

right to rescind, defensively or otherwise, after the 3-year

period of §1635(f) has run,” id., at 419, not that there was 

no rescission until a suit is filed. 

Respondents do not dispute that §1635(a) requires only 

written notice of rescission. Indeed, they concede that 

written notice suffices to rescind a loan within the first 

three days after the transaction is consummated. They

further concede that written notice suffices after that 

period if the parties agree that the lender failed to make

the required disclosures. Respondents argue, however,

that if the parties dispute the adequacy of the disclosures—and thus the continued availability of the right to

rescind—then written notice does not suffice. 

Section 1635(a) nowhere suggests a distinction between

disputed and undisputed rescissions, much less that a 

lawsuit would be required for the latter. In an effort to 

sidestep this problem, respondents point to a neighboring 
 

4 JESINOSKI v. COUNTRYWIDE HOME LOANS, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

provision, §1635(g), which they believe provides support

for their interpretation of the Act. Section 1635(g) states 

merely that, “[i]n any action in which it is determined that

a creditor has violated this section, in addition to rescission the court may award relief under section 1640 of this

title for violations of this subchapter not relating to the 

right to rescind.” Respondents argue that the phrase 

“award relief ” “in addition to rescission” confirms that 

rescission is a consequence of judicial action. But the fact 

that it can be a consequence of judicial action when 

§1635(g) is triggered in no way suggests that it can only

follow from such action. The Act contemplates various 

situations in which the question of a lender’s compliance 

with the Act’s disclosure requirements may arise in a

lawsuit—for example, a lender’s foreclosure action in 

which the borrower raises inadequate disclosure as an

affirmative defense. Section 1635(g) makes clear that a

court may not only award rescission and thereby relieve

the borrower of his financial obligation to the lender, but 

may also grant any of the remedies available under §1640 

(including statutory damages). It has no bearing upon 

whether and how borrower-rescission under §1635(a) may 

occur. 

Finally, respondents invoke the common law. It is true 

that rescission traditionally required either that the rescinding party return what he received before a rescission

could be effected (rescission at law), or else that a court 

affirmatively decree rescission (rescission in equity). 2 D. 

Dobbs, Law of Remedies §9.3(3), pp. 585–586 (2d ed. 

1993). It is also true that the Act disclaims the commonlaw condition precedent to rescission at law that the borrower tender the proceeds received under the transaction. 

15 U. S. C. §1635(b). But the negation of rescission-atlaw’s tender requirement hardly implies that the Act 

codifies rescission in equity. Nothing in our jurisprudence,

and no tool of statutory interpretation, requires that a 
 

Cite as: 574 U. S. ____ (2015) 5 

Opinion of the Court 

congressional Act must be construed as implementing its

closest common-law analogue. Cf. Astoria Fed. Sav. & 

Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U. S. 104, 108–109 (1991). 

The clear import of §1635(a) is that a borrower need only

provide written notice to a lender in order to exercise his 

right to rescind. To the extent §1635(b) alters the traditional process for unwinding such a unilaterally rescinded 

transaction, this is simply a case in which statutory law

modifies common-law practice. 

* * * 

The Jesinoskis mailed respondents written notice of

their intention to rescind within three years of their loan’s 

consummation. Because this is all that a borrower must 

do in order to exercise his right to rescind under the Act,

the court below erred in dismissing the complaint. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Eighth Circuit and

remand the case for further proceedings consistent with 

this opinion. 

It is so ordered.