Houston-based Cornerstone Capital Bank — known as Cornerstone Home Lending before the lender’s approval as a state savings bank in late 2022 — and a former executive have mutually agreed to end a $140 million discrimination lawsuit that executive filed against the company in mid-2023.
Manuel Valdes was a national production manager and regional president for Cornerstone whose career with the company spanned two decades. Valdes alleged retaliation, discrimination, harassment and breach of contract in a countersuit filed against Cornerstone Capital Bank after the company fired Valdes and sued him to enforce an employment contract, according to a press release issued Tuesday by Cornerstone’s legal counsel.
Valdes sued Marc Laird, Cornerstone’s chairman and co-founder, and Adam Laird, Cornerstone’s vice chairman, individually, seeking $140 million in damages. Cornerstone and Lairds called Valdes’s lawsuit “frivolous” and celebrated Valdes’s decision “to drop the case and walk away with nothing.”
“It’s more expedient for some companies to pay money to settle litigation,” Marc Laird said in the press release. “But, when allegations are without merit and instead appear as intended to simply damage the reputation our team members have collectively built over the past 37 years, we did not capitulate.”
The case was reportedly resolved just before it was scheduled to be heard by a jury. Kevin Leyendecker, a partner at the law firm AZA that represented Cornerstone and the Lairds, wrote on AZA’s website that the firm was “prepared to show the jury in open court the evidence that led to his firing and to recover damages the bank suffered as a result thereof.”
However, additional details surrounding the eleventh-hour resolution emerged in a statement released Wednesday by attorneys representing Valdes. According to that statement, the agreement reached by both parties entailed neither party admitting wrongdoing or liability and each party bearing its own legal costs.
“The resolution came after the Court rejected Cornerstone’s and the Lairds’ efforts to prevent Valdes from obtaining evidence from a former female employee, who gave a pivotal, last-minute deposition on the eve of trial,” the Valdes statement reads. “Cornerstone and the Lairds reached out to Valdes and asked him to drop his claims against them, in exchange for Cornerstone dropping its claims against Valdes.”
Valdes currently runs Republic State Mortgage (doing business as Alta Home Lending) with his wife, Andrina Valdes. He noted that the case was never about financial gain, despite seeking $140 million damages, and asserts that accepting Cornerstone’s offer of a walk-away settlement was about defending his own integrity.
“While this chapter has been painful, I am grateful we can finally move forward,” said Valdes in his statement. “When faced with false claims, discrimination, and retaliation, I made the decision to fight — not because it was easy, but because it was right.”
