Judging by the flurry of lawsuits Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann unleashed late Wednesday against some of the world’s top banks, mortgage-backed securities litigation has life in it yet.
Nine of the world’s largest institutional investors, including BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), sued six big banks over their roles as trustees for residential mortgage-backed securities trusts marketed to investors between 2004 and 2008. The trustees—The Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Citibank NA, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings plc, Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bank National Association—are accused of breaching their fiduciary duties to investors by “knowing that the pools of loans backing the trusts were filled with defective mortgage loans” and “unreasonably refusing to take any action.”
