A plan for local governments to seize underwater home loans—the target of a major new lawsuit this week—is in large part the work of a Cornell Law School professor and a former Sullivan & Cromwell associate who became friends at Oxford.

The Tousa ruling created a tsunami of backlash last year, after a bankruptcy court judge ruled the homebuilder's $450 million loan repayment was a fraudulent transfer. Now a federal district court judge says the bankruptcy judge was dead wrong. And he's not pulling any punches.

Remember when banks were squeamish about suing one another? The credit default swap implosion put an end to all that, to the benefit of firms like Quinn Emanuel and lawyers like Greg Joseph.