Court Opinion

ID: 9748222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:55:59.28986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:33.163781
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by ADKINS, Judge, which HARRELL, J., joins.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that payments made pursuant to a interest rate swap agreement are, by definition, not “mortgage interest” under the Code of Maryland Regulations (“COMAR”) 10.09.10.10. In my view this holding ignores the fundamental nature of the transaction between Crofton Convalescent Center, Inc. (“Crofton”) and First National Bank of Maryland (“First National”).
Examining the facts of the transaction reveals that the parties took a complicated route to reach a simple result. Crofton sought a fixed-rate loan from First National. After initial negotiations, First National offered Crofton a 6.55% fixed-rate loan, which was not accepted by Crofton. Subsequently, First National proposed a more complicated, two-step transaction. First, Crofton paid interest according to a variable rate. Second, First National and Crofton exchanged the difference between the variable rate and the 5.5% fixed rate, *223which was the swap role. The variable interest payments existed only in form; in substance, they were subject to an immediate adjustment, via the swap payment, to the 5.5% level.
The majority, like the Board, dismantled the parties’ Loan and Security Agreement, in order to reach its conclusion that the swap payments were a separate transaction from the mortgage loan, and therefore were not reimbursable because they were not “mortgage interest.” In doing so, it ignored the clear and undisputed intent of the lender and borrower.
The majority defers to the Board’s reasoning that the swap arrangement is separate from the mortgage loan simply because First National requested that Crofton make two separate payments, one for the swap, and one for the variable-rate loan. This bookkeeping accommodation made by Crofton for the lender is an insufficient basis for the Board’s ruling that the swap payments were not part of an integrated loan agreement made for the purpose of refinancing the existing mortgage loan when the parties’ clear written agreements say otherwise.
The Master Agreement, which sets up the swap arrangement between the parties, explicitly states:
All Transactions are entered into in reliance on the fact that this Master Agreement and all Confirmations form a single agreement between the parties ... and the parties would not otherwise enter into any Transactions.
“Transactions” is defined in the Master Agreement as “one or more transactions ... that are or will be governed by this Master Agreement, which includes the schedule ... and the documents and other confirming evidence ... exchanged between the parties confirming those Transactions.” Correspondingly, the Loan and Security Agreement says: “The Borrowers and the Bank have entered into an ISDA Master Agreement dated the date hereof (which ... is herein called the ‘Swap Agreement’).” The Term Note for the $4,200,000 indebtedness proves that it is issued “pursuant to the provi*224sions of’ the Loan Agreement. The Term Note for the $500,000 contains the same provision.
Equally important is the undisputed fact that Crofton sought from the bank a fixed 5.5% loan, turned down the bank’s offer for a 6% loan, and deferred to the bank’s proposal that this more complicated deal would accomplish what Crofton sought in the first place—a 5.5% loan for capital purposes. Yet the Board concluded as follows:
The ALJ found that the swap agreement was an agreement linked to the above referenced notes, [i.e. for the $4.7 million dollar loan], to ensure that the interest rate was 5.5%. But that is exactly what a swap interest rate agreement is supposed to do. It allows one of the parties to swap the uncertainties of a floating or variable interest rate for the certainty of a fixed interest rate. Nor is the fact that the interest rate swap agreement includes a notional principal amount [footnote 2 omitted] that is the same as the amount of the loan unusual, controlling, or change the character of the agreement. Most, if not all, swap agreements refer to an amount that is the principal amount of a loan (i.e. the swap agreement’s notional principal.) ... The stated amount of principal is “notional,” because an interest swap agreement is a separate, independent, stand alone agreement [footnote 3 omitted] that does not modify or exchange the principal amount owed on the loan. In short, the interest swap agreement in question, like all interest rate swap agreements, did not produce a new loan or any additional principal for either of the parties to the agreement. The swap agreement simply allowed the parties to exchange interest rates without modifying the terms of the mortgage loan agreement.
The Board’s rationale is circular and mischaracterizes this loan transaction. The Board’s thinking goes like this: most transactions using swap agreements involve no actual loans; therefore the Crofton-First National transaction was not a mortgage loan because it included an interest swap agreement. This logic falls apart upon close perusal: classification of the transaction as a mortgage loan does not depend on *225whether the amount of interest payable is at a set rate, or is determined by a formula. What COMAR says is that mortgage interest is reimbursable. So the Board should have considered whether the swap payments were mortgage interest, not whether most transactions involving swap payments involved actual loans. Instead, the Board made a sweeping generalization about swap agreements, and ignored the undisputed fact that the Loan Agreement, Notes, and Master Agreement constituted a refinance of an existing mortgage loan entered into by Crofton for operation of its facility.
Rather than looking at the transaction in question, as the Administrative Law Judge did, the Board relied on several internet definitions of swap agreements, which indicate that in the typical swap transaction the principal amount is never exchanged.1 The possibility or popularity of using swap payments as investments securities should play no role in the Board’s consideration of whether the bank actually loaned money to Crofton pursuant to a loan agreement and whether the swap payments were an integral part of that agreement.
Contrary to Respondent’s suggestion, there is no evidence that Crofton entered into the swap agreement to gamble on market rates. The Administrative Law Judge found as a fact that the “swap agreement required payments that would convert the floating rate term payments into a fixed 5.5% interest rate.” The parties’ intent that Crofton pay 5.5% interest on the capital loan is undeniable.
COMAR 10.09.10.10(C) lists five classes of capital expenses which are reimbursable: “(1) Property taxes; (2) Property insurance; (3) Mortgage interest (including bond interest); (4) Net capital value rental; and (5) Central office capital costs.” "While the regulations provide detailed and complex reimburse*226ment procedures and formulas, they do not provide further details regarding reimbursable capital expenses generally or mortgage interest in particular.2
As the majority acknowledges, “we may not abdicate our responsibility to examine independently the regulations upon which the Board relied in deciding Crofton’s appeal[.]” Majority Op., supra, at 216, 991 A.2d at 1265-66. In my view, the majority does exactly this when it accepts the Board’s reliance on the Federal Provider Reimbursement Manual (“PRM”) Section 202.2A to justify its conclusion, because the limitations set forth in that subsection clearly do not apply to an integrated loan agreement like this one. PRM Section 202, titled “DEFINITIONS,” provides the details to flesh out the requirement, set forth in PRM Section 200, that a cost will be reimbursable for “[njecessary and proper interest on both current and capital indebtedness[.]” It includes a subsection (Section 202.2) on what is considered “necessary” interest, which says that the interest must be “[ijncurred on a loan that is made to satisfy a financial need” of the provider. Subsection A of Section 202.2 addresses what is meant by “financial need,” and it starts out as follows: “When borrowed funds create excess working capital, interest expense on such borrowed funds is not an allowable cost.” It is in this context that the PRM sets forth the example relied on by the Board for the proposition that swap interest payments are never reimbursable. The example involves a hospital that has issued ten million dollars in bonds, on which it pays interest to bondholders at a variable rate. Not liking the variable rate it must pay to the bondholders, the hospital hedges its risk by entering into a separate agreement with a bank, using the notional amount of ten million dollars principal, and stipulating *227that “the hospital will pay the bank a fixed rate of 12% and the bank will pay the hospital a variable rate of prime plus 2%[.]” Under the PRM, this transaction constitutes use of excess working capital, and is therefore not reimbursable.
This example is not applicable to Crofton’s loan. Unlike Crofton’s loan, the swap interest rate agreement in the example does not “satisfy a financial need of the provider” because the hospital already had the capital it needed, which it obtained when it issued the bonds. The swap interest rate agreement was with a third party, and thus was separate and apart from the borrowing represented by the bonds. The third party bank never lent any money to the hospital.
Accordingly, I submit that it was wrong, as a matter of law, for the Board, tasked with applying the clear language of COMAR 10.09.10.10, which requires reimbursement to a nursing home for mortgage interest on capital loans, to rest its decision on the federal PRM addressing dissimilar financial arrangements utilized by a hospital that had issued bonds. The deference we give to agency determinations of law has limits. As the majority recognizes, “ ‘it is always within our prerogative to determine whether an agency’s conclusions of law are correct.’ ” Adventist Health Care, Inc. v. Md. Health Care Comm’n, 392 Md. 103, 121, 896 A.2d 320, 331 (2006) (quoting Kushell v. Dep’t of Natural Res., 385 Md. 563, 576, 870 A.2d 186, 193 (2005)). In my view, the majority errs in declining to exercise its prerogative to overrule the Board’s misreading of the unambiguous term “mortgage interest!,]” contained in COMAR 10.09.10.10.
Judge HARRELL has authorized me to state that he joins in this dissenting opinion.

. See, e.g., InvestorWords.com-Investing Glossary, http://www. investorwords.com, (last visited March 12, 2010); Investopedia.com, http://www.investopedia.com (describing swap agreements as: "Traditionally, the exchange of one security for another to change the maturity (bonds), quality of issues (stocks or bonds), or because investment objectives have changed. Recently, swaps have grown to include currency swaps and interest rate swaps.”) (last visited March 12, 2010).

. The Board utilized the definition of "mortgage interest” offered by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: "interest is the cost incurred for the use of borrowed funds.” This is consistent with the definition of "interest” in Black’s Law Dictionary as "|T|he compensation fixed by agreement or allowed by law for the use or detention of money, or for the loss of money by one who is entitled to its use; esp. the amount owed to a lender in return for the use of borrowed money.” Black’s Law Dictionary 886 (9th ed. 2009).