Barry Ostrager, Simpson's litigation head, told us he's having a great time in his debut as a plaintiffs class action lawyer. And why not? He's winning.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Fabrice Tourre finally came face to face in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Wednesday afternoon in the most high-profile trial stemming from the financial crisis.

Judges in New York just keep doling out bad news for banks caught up in litigation over mortgage-backed securities. The latest defendants to feel the sting are Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, which learned Friday that they can't escape fraud claims in state court in Manhattan over a combined $457 million in MBS gone sour.

Fresh off a pretrial defeat in a civil fraud lawsuit brought by the SEC, lawyers for former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre are just a month away from selecting a jury. On Friday they'll try to convince a judge in Manhattan to let them shine a spotlight at trial on the lawyers who reviewed the ill-fated deal at the heart of the case.

HSBC on Monday announced it had entered into a partial settlement with investors in Thema International Fund. A day later Manhattan federal district court judge Richard Berman dismissed all the claims against the bank and other defendants, largely on the grounds that the cases should be filed in Ireland and Luxembourg.