On May 23, 2016, in an interesting development in one of the more high profile lawsuits to arise out of the financial crisis, the Second Circuit reversed the $1.27 billion civil penalty that Southern District of New York Judge Jed Rakoff imposed on Countrywide and several related defendants in a case involving the company’s sale of mortgages to government sponsored entities. A copy of the Second Circuit’s opinion can be found here.
In the following guest post, attorneys from the Paul Weiss law firm take a look at the Second Circuit’s decision and discusses its implications, particularly with respect to the government’s use of the the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) to prosecute financial institutions’ alleged to have committed financial misconduct.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Second Circuit Strikes Down Imposition of $1.27 Billion FIRREA Penalty
In what is the largest settlement so far of an mortgage-backed securities class action lawsuit filed as part of the subprime and credit-crisis securities litigation wave, the parties to the consolidated Countrywide mortgage-backed securities suit pending in the Central District of California have agreed to settle the litigation for $500 million. The settlement is subject
Settlement opt-outs have been always been a feature of securities class action litigation. However, as part of the settlements of the huge cases filed during the era of corporate scandals at the beginning of the last decade, opt outs became more prevalent and they represented an increasingly significant part of the case resolution. Many of
On May 18, 2011, the California Intermediate Court of Appeals 
In the largest subprime-related securities suit settlement to date, Countrywide Financial has reached an agreement to pay $600 million to settle the securities class action pending against the company and certain of its directors and officers, according to an April 23, 2010 article by Gabe Friedman in The Daily Journal (
In a noteworthy subprime-related litigation development, on August 5, 2009, the parties to the Countrywide ERISA action filed a stipulation of settlement (
In its most significant enforcement action yet related to the subprime meltdown, on June 4, 2009, the SEC filed a civil securities fraud complaint (
We interrupt our regularly scheduled stream of dispatches from the credit crisis front to provide a quick update on the now seemingly remote options backdating scandal. Even though the whole world has moved on and though options backdating pales by comparison to what followed, many options backdating cases continue to grind on. At least a
On December 1, 2008, in a massive, detailed 112-page opinion (in three parts, 
On October 7, 2008, in a decision that could affect other litigation relation to Countrywide Financial,