Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. This article summarizes public reporting, a published arbitration account, court decisions, and federal rules for informational purposes only. Arbitration outcomes turn on individual facts and documents. If you have a solar loan and questions about your own contract, talk to a licensed attorney in your state.
Last updated: August 6, 2026. Arbitration awards are private documents and are usually not published in full; details below are drawn from news coverage, the homeowner's law firm, and the arbitrator's language quoted in those sources.
Short answer: did GoodLeap lose a solar arbitration?
Yes. In a binding arbitration in Georgia, decided by a former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court sitting as arbitrator, the arbitrator found that the now-bankrupt installer Pink Energy had acted as GoodLeap's agent, held GoodLeap responsible for what Pink Energy did to homeowner Stephanie Parker, cancelled her roughly $90,000 solar loan, and ordered GoodLeap to pay her damages along with arbitration costs, expert witness costs, and attorney's fees. WSB-TV in Atlanta reported the win, and her lawyers at Kneupper & Covey published their own account of the award. (WSB-TV; Kneupper & Covey)
What makes this award interesting is not the dollar figure. It is the reasoning: when a lender's contract with an installer gives the lender control over how the installer treats customers, the lender can be made to answer for that installer's conduct, even after the installer files for bankruptcy and disappears.
At a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Forum | Private binding arbitration in Georgia, not a court case |
| Arbitrator | A former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court (name not published in the sources) |
| Homeowner | Stephanie Parker, Georgia |
| Lender | GoodLeap LLC (formerly Loanpal LLC) |
| Installer | Pink Energy, formerly Power Home Solar, LLC; filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy October 7, 2022 |
| Homeowner's counsel | Kneupper & Covey; attorney Jarrett Faber argued the case |
| Core legal finding | Pink Energy acted as GoodLeap's agent, so GoodLeap was responsible for Pink Energy's conduct |
| Loan outcome | The solar loan, roughly $90,000, was cancelled in its entirety |
| Money awarded | Damages to the homeowner plus arbitration costs, expert witness costs, and attorney's fees; reported figures differ by source (see below) |
| Related arbitrations | Her attorney told WSB-TV he was then representing more than 30 clients in similar disputes with GoodLeap |
| Precedent value | None in the formal sense: an arbitration award binds the parties to that dispute, not other arbitrators or courts |
What happened to the homeowner
The arbitrator's own findings, quoted by the homeowner's law firm, describe a sales process many homeowners will recognize.
Parker bought her Georgia home in October 2021. On November 8, 2021, a Pink Energy salesperson arrived uninvited. She knew nothing about solar. He stayed roughly four hours and told her the system would eliminate most or all of her power bills, that she would receive a rebate of $6,340.84 from Pink Energy, that government incentives would drastically cut the cost, that she could expect to pay only $35,000 to $40,000 after those incentives, and that Pink Energy would monitor and maintain the system under its warranties. (Kneupper & Covey)
Then came the signing. According to the arbitrator's findings, the salesperson produced an iPad holding the contracts. No paper copy was shown. Parker never controlled the device and had no opportunity to read what she was signing. The salesperson skipped from signature field to signature field. That same afternoon, he helped her apply for financing and told her the finance company was one of Pink Energy's partners.
During installation, Pink Energy substantially damaged her roof, causing leaks and interior damage. She called GoodLeap on January 3, 2022 to report it. She was told to start making her payments and to take the problems up with Pink Energy. Pink Energy disavowed its warranties and repaired nothing. The promised rebate never arrived. The system never produced anything close to what she had been promised. She kept calling. Then Pink Energy filed for bankruptcy in October 2022 and the calls stopped mattering. (Kneupper & Covey)
Her account to WSB-TV was blunter. "I never got a product that worked, and it was very demanding. They wanted their money," she said. Her utility bill, she told the station, had nearly doubled. (WSB-TV)
An expert witness inspected the property. According to her attorney's public account of the case, the inspection found unprofessional workmanship, water damage around the array, work that did not follow local building code, electrical problems, a fire risk if the panels stayed in place, and production far below what had been represented. (Kneupper & Covey case discussion)
What the arbitrator actually decided
The decisive question was not whether the installation was bad. It was whether the lender had to care.
GoodLeap's position in these disputes is familiar to anyone who has made the call: the loan is a separate contract, the installer is a separate company, and the installer's failures are not the lender's problem. The arbitrator rejected that framing on these facts, in language worth reading closely:
"The Solar Financing Agreement ... between Goodleap and Pink Energy has been thoroughly reviewed by the Arbitrator, as have the Georgia statutes and case law relating to agency. Applying that law and various provisions of the Solar Financing Agreement to the facts of this case, I find that Pink Energy was an agent of Goodleap in connection with the Parker contract with Pink Energy and also in connection with Parker's loan agreement with Goodleap. The Agreement places in Goodleap control of many of Pink Energy's actions with its potential customers including, but not limited to, timeframes relating to warranty support services, required manufacturer's warranties, and workmanship warranties. It also gave Goodleap a broad right to terminate its relationship with Pink Energy. Additionally, Pink Energy's salesman pushed financing of the solar system with Goodleap, as was done with Parker, for which Goodleap paid kickbacks to Pink Energy, as was the case in connection with Parker's financing contract with Goodleap."
That passage is quoted from the award by the homeowner's law firm, and WSB-TV independently quoted the same core sentence: "The Agreement places in Goodleap control of many of Pink Energy's actions with its potential customers." (Kneupper & Covey; WSB-TV)
Three factual pillars carried the agency finding, and each one came from a document rather than from testimony:
| What the arbitrator relied on | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Control over warranty terms and timeframes in the lender-installer agreement | Control over how the installer treats customers is the classic hallmark of an agency relationship |
| Required manufacturer's and workmanship warranties | The lender set standards for the installer's own performance obligations |
| A broad right to terminate the installer relationship | The power to end the relationship at will reinforces control |
| Compensation paid to the installer tied to steering customers into the lender's financing | Shows the salesperson was advancing the lender's business, not acting as a stranger to it |
Notice what is absent from that list: nothing depended on Pink Energy showing up to defend itself. The installer was bankrupt and gone. The case was built on the contract between the two companies and on the homeowner's own paperwork.
The award, and why reported figures differ
Public accounts of the money differ, and it is worth being precise rather than picking the biggest number.
| Source | What it reports |
|---|---|
| Kneupper & Covey, the homeowner's law firm | The client won approximately $13,000, GoodLeap was ordered to pay her attorney's fees, and her $90,000 solar loan was cancelled in its entirety (kneuppercovey.com) |
| The firm's own case discussion | Adds that GoodLeap was separately ordered to pay roughly $13,000 covering the costs of the arbitration and the expert witness, on top of the client's recovery, plus attorney's fees (case discussion) |
| WSB-TV, Atlanta | Reports Parker was awarded more than $40,000, and that her remaining debt and her contract with GoodLeap were voided (wsbtv.com) |
The likeliest explanation for the gap is that different sources are counting different components: damages to the homeowner alone, versus damages plus arbitration costs, expert costs, and fees. The award itself has not been published in full, so we do not present a single total as verified fact. Every source agrees on the two points that matter most to a homeowner in the same position: the loan was cancelled, and the lender paid.
It is also worth noting what the cash was for. The homeowner's attorney observed that her recovery would largely go toward repairing the roof. Cancellation of a $90,000 obligation was the real relief. (case discussion)
Why the agency finding matters when your installer is gone
The single most common situation we see is this: the company that sold and installed the system no longer exists, but the loan does. The installer's warranty is worthless. The lender's answer is that its paperwork is valid and the payment is due. The homeowner is left holding a bill for something that was never delivered.
Pink Energy is the textbook case. Power Home Solar, LLC, doing business as Pink Energy, filed for Chapter 7 protection in the Western District of North Carolina on October 7, 2022, after completing a very large number of residential installations. (Bankruptcy case summary) Its collapse was significant enough that in November 2022 a coalition of nine state attorneys general wrote to five solar lenders, GoodLeap among them, urging them to suspend loan payments and interest for Pink Energy customers who never received a working system. (Michigan Attorney General)
That letter was a request. The Georgia arbitration is what happens when a request becomes a claim. If a lender's own contract with the installer gave the lender control over how customers were treated, the lender's separateness starts to look like a paperwork arrangement rather than a legal shield. As the homeowner's attorney put it in describing the outcome: a lender cannot throw up its hands, say the installer is gone, and keep billing.
The practical consequence for homeowners is a shift in where you look for leverage. You are not looking for the vanished installer. You are looking at the relationship between the installer and the lender, and at what your own documents show about how the sale and the financing were bundled together.
The other route: the FTC Holder Rule
Agency is one theory. A second, entirely separate one shows up in nearly every conversation about solar loans, and Parker's attorney raised it directly with WSB-TV: "The Federal Trade Commission has decided that lenders do have some responsibility when they make bad business decisions to partner with companies that are deceiving consumers, and they are liable." (WSB-TV)
He is describing the FTC's Holder Rule, codified at 16 CFR Part 433. The rule requires sellers in covered consumer credit transactions to include a specific notice in the credit contract. The required language reads:
"NOTICE: ANY HOLDER OF THIS CONSUMER CREDIT CONTRACT IS SUBJECT TO ALL CLAIMS AND DEFENSES WHICH THE DEBTOR COULD ASSERT AGAINST THE SELLER OF GOODS OR SERVICES OBTAINED PURSUANT HERETO OR WITH THE PROCEEDS HEREOF. RECOVERY HEREUNDER BY THE DEBTOR SHALL NOT EXCEED AMOUNTS PAID BY THE DEBTOR HEREUNDER."
That text is the rule's own words. (16 CFR § 433.2, eCFR) Read it carefully, because both halves matter. The first sentence means the claims you have against the seller travel with the paper to whoever holds the loan. The second sentence caps what you can affirmatively recover under the rule at what you have actually paid. Separately, the FTC has issued a Commission statement addressing the treatment of attorneys' fees and costs in relation to that limitation. (FTC Commission statement)
Two practical points follow. First, whether the notice appears in your particular financing agreement is a document question, not a matter of opinion, so find your agreement and look. Second, the Holder Rule and an agency theory can point in different directions on remedy: the rule's cap is tied to amounts paid, while an agency finding of the kind reached in Georgia can support cancelling the remaining obligation outright. Which theory fits your situation is exactly the kind of question a licensed attorney reviewing your paperwork answers, and one reason a well-organized file is worth more than a strong feeling about fairness.
The limits: what this award does not do
We would rather set expectations honestly than sell an outcome.
An arbitration award is not precedent. It resolves one dispute between one homeowner and one lender. It does not bind other arbitrators, it does not bind courts, and it does not cancel anyone else's loan. Her attorneys have suggested the findings could carry weight in other cases through doctrines like collateral estoppel or res judicata, but that is an argument to be made, not a settled rule, and no decision cited here establishes it. (Kneupper & Covey)
Agency arguments lose too. In October 2025, the Third Circuit affirmed dismissal of a New Jersey homeowner's claims against her lenders, Sunlight Financial and Cross River Bank, in a case involving allegations that a door-to-door salesman signed her up for a 25-year loan of nearly $100,000 using a fake email address and a digital signature in her name. The court held she had not plausibly alleged an agency relationship between the salesman and the lenders, which defeated her vicarious liability claim, and that her direct claims were not pleaded with the required particularity. (Migliore v. Vision Solar, 3d Cir.) Sympathetic facts do not carry an agency theory by themselves. The lender-installer contract, and what it says about control, is what does the work.
The forum is usually not your choice. Most solar financing agreements require arbitration, frequently with a class action waiver. That means a private proceeding rather than a public courtroom, and it means results are rarely published, which is why individual outcomes in this space surface through news coverage and law firm announcements rather than through searchable case law.
Well-funded opponents litigate. By her own lawyers' description, GoodLeap contested this claim to the end. Whatever you think of the merits, plan for a process rather than a phone call.
None of that makes the Georgia result unimportant. It means the result is a roadmap, not a guarantee.
The wider pattern regulators have described
This award did not appear in a vacuum. Regulators have been describing structural problems in solar financing for several years.
Minnesota's Attorney General sued GoodLeap and three other lenders in March 2024, alleging roughly $35 million in undisclosed dealer fees financed into Minnesota borrowers' loan balances. GoodLeap disputes the allegations, the case has not gone to trial, and no court has found the company liable. We cover that case in detail in our GoodLeap Minnesota Attorney General lawsuit explainer. (MN Attorney General)
The CFPB published an Issue Spotlight on solar financing in August 2024, identifying hidden markup fees, misleading claims about what consumers would pay, payments that balloon when an expected tax credit does not arrive, and exaggerated savings claims. (CFPB Issue Spotlight)
Set the Georgia arbitration alongside those. The government actions target how the loans were priced and disclosed. The arbitration targets who answers when the system underneath the loan fails. Different questions, same underlying structure: a sale and a loan presented to the homeowner as one transaction, then separated the moment something goes wrong.
What this means if you have a solar loan
If your installer is gone and your lender says the loan stands, this award tells you the question is worth asking rather than assuming the answer. Some concrete steps, using only documents you already have or can request:
- Find your financing agreement and read the notice provisions. Look specifically for the Holder Rule notice quoted above, and for the arbitration clause.
- Identify who your lender actually is. Many homeowners never realize a separate finance company is involved, or that the loan has since been sold. Check the name on the financing paperwork and on your current statements.
- Line up what you were promised against what the contract says. Production estimates, savings claims, rebates, warranty commitments, and tax credit representations belong side by side with the contract language.
- Document performance. Monitoring data, production reports, and utility bills before and after installation turn "it never worked" into a measurable shortfall.
- Preserve everything about the sale. Texts, emails, proposals, and any recollection of how the signing happened. In Parker's case, how the documents were presented on an iPad became part of the arbitrator's findings.
- Do not rely on a lawsuit filed for someone else. Your leverage comes from your own file. For the general process, see how to cancel a solar contract.
The evidence that decided this case
Look back at what actually moved the arbitrator, because it is a useful checklist. The contract between the lender and the installer, showing control. The salesperson's promises, set against what the system produced. The manner of signing. A dated call to the lender reporting the damage, and the lender's response. The installer's disavowal of its warranties. An expert inspection documenting workmanship, code, electrical, and safety problems. The bankruptcy that ended any hope of installer remedy.
Every one of those is a document, a date, or an inspection, not an opinion. That is the difference between a homeowner who is frustrated and a homeowner with a case file.
How Solar Exit Group helps
Solar Exit Group is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. What we do is the unglamorous part that determines whether a claim goes anywhere: we help homeowners nationwide assemble what they already have into a clean, indexed case file. Contracts and amendments, the financing agreement and its notice and arbitration provisions, UCC filings, production and monitoring data, utility bills before and after installation, interconnection paperwork, and sales communications, organized into a timeline, a side-by-side of promises versus contract terms, payment history and escalator math, any production shortfall, and lien status.
With your approval, we send that file to partner consumer-protection law firms licensed in your state, who can evaluate options such as unwinding a lease, PPA, or loan, removing a UCC-1 fixture lien, correcting a credit tradeline, or pursuing rescission or cancellation. The review is free, with no upfront cost, and no result is guaranteed.
FAQ
Yes. In a Georgia arbitration decided by a former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, the arbitrator held GoodLeap responsible for the conduct of installer Pink Energy, awarded the homeowner damages plus costs and attorney's fees, and cancelled her solar loan. (WSB-TV)
It can happen, but it is not automatic. In this arbitration the arbitrator found the bankrupt installer had acted as the lender's agent, so the lender answered for the installer's conduct. Other courts have rejected agency arguments on different facts, so the outcome depends on your contracts, your state's law, and the evidence you can document. This is not legal advice.
Agency means one company had enough control over another that the law treats the second company's conduct as the first company's own. Here the arbitrator found the Solar Financing Agreement gave GoodLeap control over warranty timeframes, required manufacturer's and workmanship warranties, and a broad right to terminate, and that the installer was compensated in connection with steering financing to GoodLeap. (Kneupper & Covey)
The Holder Rule, 16 CFR Part 433, requires many consumer credit contracts to carry a notice stating that any holder of the contract is subject to all claims and defenses the borrower could assert against the seller, and that recovery shall not exceed amounts paid under the contract. Whether that notice appears in your agreement is a document question. (eCFR)
No. An arbitration award resolves one dispute between one borrower and one lender. It is not a class action, it does not bind other arbitrators, and it does not cancel anyone else's loan. Its value to you is evidentiary and strategic, not automatic.
Most solar financing agreements contain an arbitration clause requiring disputes to be resolved in private arbitration rather than in court, often with a class action waiver. Awards are generally not published, which is why individual results surface through news reports and law firm announcements.
Yes. Power Home Solar, LLC did business as Pink Energy and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the Western District of North Carolina on October 7, 2022, leaving customers with systems, warranties, and loans that outlived the company. (Bankruptcy case summary)
The installation contract and every amendment, the financing agreement including its arbitration and notice provisions, the sales proposal with promised production and savings, monitoring and production data, utility bills before and after installation, all written communication with the installer and lender, any inspection or roof damage documentation, and your payment history.
Get a free case review
If your installer is gone, your system never performed as promised, and your lender still expects payment, Solar Exit Group can help you organize your documents into a clear case file, at no upfront cost, with no obligation and no guaranteed outcome.
Call 833-765-2711 or email info@solarexitgrp.com.
Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm.
Sources
Primary documents, rules, and court records
- 16 CFR Part 433, Preservation of Consumers' Claims and Defenses (Holder Rule), including the required notice text in § 433.2: ecfr.gov
- Federal Trade Commission, Commission statement on the Holder Rule and attorneys' fees and costs: ftc.gov
- Eva Migliore v. Vision Solar LLC, No. 24-1679 (3d Cir. Oct. 22, 2025), affirming dismissal of claims against lenders for failure to plausibly allege agency: law.justia.com
- In re Power Home Solar, LLC d/b/a Pink Energy, Chapter 7, W.D.N.C. Bankruptcy Case No. 22-50228, filed October 7, 2022, case summary: hickorylaw.com
- Michigan Attorney General, nine-state coalition letter urging five solar lenders including GoodLeap to suspend loan payments and interest for Pink Energy customers, November 29, 2022: michigan.gov
- Minnesota Attorney General, press release on the solar lending lawsuit against GoodLeap and three other lenders, March 8, 2024: ag.state.mn.us
- CFPB, Issue Spotlight: Solar Financing, August 7, 2024: consumerfinance.gov
Reporting and party accounts of the arbitration
- WSB-TV Channel 2 Atlanta, Justin Gray, "GA woman stuck with $90K solar panel system that didn't work wins arbitration," July 2024: wsbtv.com
- Kneupper & Covey, "Goodleap Loses Key Solar Arbitration," the homeowner's law firm's account of the award, including quoted findings: kneuppercovey.com
- Kneupper & Covey, attorney Kevin Kneupper's recorded discussion of the arbitration and the Minnesota allegations, July 18, 2024: youtube.com
Arbitration awards are private and this one has not been published in full. Statements attributed to the arbitrator are quoted as reproduced by the homeowner's law firm and, where noted, independently quoted by WSB-TV. Allegations described in government actions are allegations only; GoodLeap disputes the Minnesota claims and no court has found the company liable in that case.