On October 7, 2009, Thomas C. Leppert resigned as a member of the Board of Directors of Washington Mutual Inc., effective immediately.

Washington Mutual Inc. announced that at least part of a massive securities-fraud lawsuit stemming from 2008's collapse of the company appears set to move forward after a hearing in federal court in Seattle. The allegations include misrepresenting the company's financial results, undermining its risk-management policies, corrupting the appraisal process and abandoning appropriate underwriting standards. The plaintiffs claim that directors allowed Killinger and the other officers to make false and misleading statements about WaMu's financial condition and loan policies, and Deloitte would have uncovered the trouble had it been doing its job properly. And because the offering documents for the securities offerings contained false and misleading information, they claim, the underwriters also are liable. But the defendants argued that the 268-page suit failed to show that specific statements made by Killinger and others were false, or that the executives deliberately said things they knew to be untrue. In that case, which covers much of the same ground as the securities-fraud suit, Pechman dismissed all claims against Killinger and JPMorgan Chase, which bought WaMu's banking operations last fall, and some of the claims against WaMu officers and directors, letting the rest stand. Both suits are seeking class-action status.

A California woman has filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and Washington Mutual Inc., alleging the two companies illegally reduced or froze customers' home equity credit lines. The 19-page suit, filed in federal court in Southern California, alleges that JPMorgan, the new owner of Washington Mutual, restricted its customers' access to 'hundreds of millions of dollars worth of credit at a critical time'. A jury trial is demanded. The size of the group involved in the lawsuit is unclear. According to the suit, JPMorgan recently sent letters to thousands of customers with home equity credit lines across the country, informing them that their accounts had been suspended because of the decline in value of the property securing those lines of credit. The lawsuit was filed by Michell Kimball, a San Diego-area resident who took out a $500,000 home equity credit line from Washington Mutual in the fall of 2007.