Dividend Solar Finance, LLC, and Fifth Third Bank
This MDL consolidates proposed class actions alleging that homeowners were induced into financing residential solar system purchases through deceptive sales practices attributed to installers partnered with a solar-financing company, and that the financing company and an affiliated bank lender concealed "platform fees" within loan principal while representing that the loans carried low interest rates, in addition to alleged misrepresentations about tax-credit availability and projected energy savings. Centralized in the District of Minnesota in 2024, the docket carries 42 pending actions.
What has shaped this docket's trajectory is an August 2025 ruling allowing fraud and predatory-lending claims to proceed against both the solar-financing company and the bank defendant, rejecting an early dismissal challenge. That ruling is significant because it keeps an institutional bank lender, not just the solar-installer sales channel, exposed to fraud-based theories, reflecting a broader legal question in consumer solar-financing litigation about how much liability flows upstream from point-of-sale misrepresentations to the financial institutions that fund and profit from the resulting loans.
For anyone tracking litigation tied to the rapidly growing residential solar-financing industry, this docket is an early, closely watched test of how courts will treat bank-lender liability for deceptive practices originating with independent sales partners rather than the bank itself. Criterica Intelligence's platform tracks this upstream-liability question, whether and how financial institutions bear responsibility for point-of-sale misconduct by partnered sellers, as a structural theme relevant well beyond this specific docket.
That homeowners were induced into residential solar financing through deceptive sales tactics by partnered installers, with a solar-financing company and a bank lender allegedly concealing "platform fees" in loan principal and misrepresenting tax-credit availability and projected energy savings.
It raises the question of how much liability for point-of-sale misrepresentations by independent solar-installer sales partners flows upstream to the financial institution that funds and profits from the resulting loans, a live and unsettled issue in consumer solar-financing litigation.
The court allowed fraud and predatory-lending claims to move forward against both the solar-financing company and the bank, rejecting an early challenge to dismiss those claims.
It is an early, closely watched test of bank-lender liability in the fast-growing residential solar-financing sector, a structural question Criterica Intelligence tracks as relevant to comparable financing-partnership disputes beyond this specific docket.
Statistics shown reflect historical or illustrative model outputs derived from real case data. They are not predictions or guarantees of any individual outcome. Litigation results depend on facts, jurisdiction, judge, and counsel, and vary case by case. Model accuracy is subject to selection effects and changing legal dynamics.