Alison Frankel

After New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed his new complaint against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and the Mortgage Electronic Registry System, I got an email from the AG’s spokesman. “Looking forward to your story on the MERS lawsuit in the wake of your inaccurate conjecture this week,” it said, referring to my column expressing skepticism that the recently-announced joint mortgage-backed securities task force will accomplish more than the individual task force members have.

As I said in that piece, I’m eager for my skepticism to be proved unfounded. I hope the task force tells the world exactly who is responsible for the greed-driven securitization deficiencies already alleged in private MBS suits and in Congressional reports. I hope someone comes up with a legal theory to hold wrongdoers accountable for packaging mortgages that never should have been issued into securities that were (allegedly) not what they were represented to be.

That, however, is not what the AG’s new case does.

The suit, filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, asserts that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems — the privately-held organization established in the 1995 to streamline the securitization process by centralizing mortgage-transfer records — was essentially a sham operation that swindled localities out of $2 billion in mortgage-transfer fees and improperly foreclosed on homeowners whose mortgages it didn’t actually own. The AG’s office alleges that MERS and the defendant banks, all members of the MERS system, have foreclosed on hundreds of homes to which MERS was nominally the mortgage assignee, even though such foreclosures were “faulty and deceptive in several respects.” (The alleged deficiencies include MERS’s lack of standing to bring foreclosure actions; MERS’s misrepresentation of its foreclosure rights to homeowners and judges; and the mortgage registry’s submission of robosigned affidavits to courts in foreclosure cases.) Moreover, according to the complaint, MERS’s deeply flawed, private database hid mortgage transfers from courts and homeowners who needed to track them down.

Those are all serious allegations, but they are familiar. Here is MERS’s official response to Schneiderman’s complaint, but MERS offers a more detailed explanation of its record in defending against similar charges in its motion to dismiss the Delaware Attorney General’s October 2011 suit against it.

“Courts throughout the country have routinely and consistently held that MERS’s initiation of foreclosures is authorized by the express language of the mortgage contracts executed by the borrowers of member-originators and by the assignments MERS obtained from mortgagees of non-member-originators,” wrote MERS’s lawyers at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, citing eight cases from state and federal courts around the country that have upheld the mortgage registry’s standing to foreclose.

To me, what’s most interesting about the New York attorney general’s suit against MERS and three of its members is what the complaint doesn’t assert. The Delaware AG’s MERS suit included allegations that MERS helped MBS issuers and securitization trustees peddle securities that were fundamentally flawed, since MBS trusts may not actually have owned some of the mortgages bundled into the securities they sold. When the suit was filed, I said that if the Delaware AG’s allegations were true, the entire securitization industry was facing havoc. (MERS’s Morgan Lewis lawyers countered that the AG doesn’t have standing to assert deceptive trade claims on behalf of MBS investors.)

But Schneiderman’s complaint doesn’t include claims on behalf of MBS investors. It doesn’t address details of the securitization process at all, beyond noting that MERS was created and operated to facilitate that process.

Schneiderman has been very forceful in arguing that the mortgage crisis can’t be resolved without addressing investors’ claims that they were duped into buying misrepresented mortgage-backed securities. Almost singlehandedly, the New York AG forced his fellow state AGs to refuse to waive securitization claims against the banks negotiating a 50-state settlement of foreclosure-deficiency allegations and embarked on his own investigation of those practice. Schneiderman has told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he and Delaware AG Joseph Biden III are committed to “looking at the conduct of individual institutions and individuals to see if there were misrepresentations made, to see if there was fraud committed, to see if criminal acts were also a part of this.”

I’m still waiting to see the fruits of that investigation. Surely, Friday’s MERS suit isn’t all the New York Attorney General has up his sleeve.

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In 1998, 400 investors in a trust that distributed revenue from a communications satellite got word that their securitization trustee had settled a $41 million suit against the satellite’s fuel supplier. The trustee, IBJ Schroeder, filed a New York State Article 77 proceeding to obtain a judge’s endorsement of the $8.5 million settlement. Some of the investors protested the deal, arguing that the trustee didn’t have the power to settle the case without consulting them. In 2000, a New York appeals court ruled that, in fact, IBJ Schroeder did have that power, under both New York law and the contract governing the satellite revenue trust. The lower court ultimately ruled in the Article 77 case that even if investors considered the settlement amount too low, Schroeder hadn’t acted unreasonably or imprudently in striking the deal.

If you’re wondering why I’m telling you about an 11-year old ruling involving a defunct communications satellite, it’s because the IBJ Schroeder opinion is sure to be invoked by Bank of New York Mellon, the trustee of those Countrywide mortgage-backed securities, as well as the 22 Countrywide MBS investors represented by Gibbs & Bruns as they appeal last week’s decision by U.S. District Judge William Pauley III of Manhattan federal court. In holding that the federal courts have jurisdiction over Bank of America’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement, Pauley took issue with BNY Mellon’s use of an Article 77 proceeding to get the deal approved. The judge wrote that Article 77 is usually employed to resolve garden-variety trust administration issues; BNY Mellon and Gibbs & Bruns will use the IBJ Schroeder ruling to argue at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that, contrary to Pauley’s assertion, there’s precedent for using Article 77 exactly as they did in the BofA MBS case.

But even as the Second Circuit decides whether to take up the issue of the rights and responsibilities of securitization trustees, state attorneys general are likely to pounce upon some of the language in Pauley’s 21-page ruling. I warned that there might be unintended consequences for indentured trustees when the judge asked for briefing on the BNY Mellon’s duties. After Pauley’s ruling, that warning is now a red alert. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his faithful follower, Joseph Biden III of Delaware, have both announced that they’re investigating MBS securitization trustees. Schneiderman showed he’s serious by filing state-law fraud claims against BNY Mellon along with his petition to intervene in the BofA Article 77 proceeding. In his complaint against BNY, Schneiderman argued that once an investment goes south, as many of the MBS trusts have, the indentured trustee has a fiduciary duty to trust beneficiaries under New York common law.

BNY Mellon’s lawyers, on the other hand, argued in a brief to Pauley that an indentured trustee does not have a fiduciary duty to beneficiaries. The investment contract, BNY Mellon said, governs the trustee’s responsibilities. Standard securitization contracts, known as pooling and servicing agreements, say the indentured trustee serves a ministerial function, mostly making revenue distributions to investors. BNY Mellon told the judge that its only responsibilities, aside from those specified in pooling and servicing agreements, are common law duties to avoid conflicts of interest and to exercise due care.

The judge, however, took a broader view of the source of the trustee’s responsibilities — and that’s good news for regulators who are trying to find routes to liability for securitization trustees. Pauley considered the question in the context of determining whether the proposed BofA settlement falls into an exception to federal court jurisdiction in the Class Action Fairness Act. But his reasoning, of course, can be cited in other contexts.

Pauley cited Judge Learned Hand — who sat on the same court a century ago — to conclude that indentured trustees can’t evade a duty of loyalty to beneficiaries just because their responsibilities are defined by a contract. BNY Mellon had asserted its only duty to act in good faith came from the Countrywide pooling and servicing agreements. Pauley said it comes instead from state common law. As New York and Delaware regulators consider causes of action against securitization trustees, they’re going to have stronger claims if they can argue that trustees breached their state-law duties to investors. Similarly, trustee defenses are weakened if they can’t argue that their responsibilities were strictly defined by pooling and servicing agreements.

The New York and Delaware AGs are in an awkward limbo right now in the BofA MBS litigation. When Grais & Ellsworth removed the case to federal court, their intervention petitions were pending before Judge Barbara Kapnick in New York State Supreme Court. (BNY Mellon and Gibbs & Bruns, you may recall, filed fiery briefs opposing the N.Y. AG’s intervention.) The AGs stayed out of the federal court case while Pauley decided whether to remand it. But now they’re likely to renew their intervention petitions before the federal court judge, who has already raised a lot of the same questions as the AGs about the fairness of a binding settlement that was reached without consulting most of the investors it will affect. (The New York AG’s Martin Act counterclaim against BNY Mellon, in case you’re wondering, can technically proceed in federal court as well.) As I’ve said before, it’s too soon to say for sure that the proposed settlement will stay with Pauley. But if it does, invigorated attorneys general are the last thing BofA, BNY Mellon, and the Gibbs & Bruns group need.

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As expected, the Delaware attorney general’s office moved Tuesday night to intervene in Bank of America’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with Countrywide mortgage-backed noteholders. The Delaware petition to intervene and supporting brief are notable for their moderate tone, in contrast to last week’s fiery objection and counterclaims by the New York attorney general. Tuesday’s filings, signed by Delaware deputy AG Jeremy Eicher, said that Delaware is concerned about BofA’s indemnification of the MBS trustee, Bank of New York Mellon — the same conflict-of-interest allegation raised by just about every intervenor who so far has surfaced in the case. Delaware, which noted that two of the Countrywide MBS trusts are Delaware vehicles, argued that it needs more information about the proposed settlement in order to protect investors.

The real story, though, is that both the New York and Delaware AGs believe BofA and BNY Mellon can’t resolve their liability to MBS investors without including regulators in the deal. After all, the proposed $8.5 billion settlement encroaches on turf already claimed by New York AG Eric Schneiderman and Delaware AG Joseph Biden III; in June, the New York Times broke the news that the New York and Delaware AG offices were investigating the banks involved in the mortgage-backed securitization process — including sponsors and underwriters such as Countrywide and BofA and trustees such as BNY Mellon.

The Delaware and New York securitization probes, which are running parallel to the 50-state AG investigation of banks’ mortgage foreclosure practices, gave Schneiderman and Biden a platform to argue that MBS investors, as well as homeowners, are affected by slipshod mortgage underwriting practices and widespread foreclosures. In the wider foreclosure-resolution negotiations between mortgage lenders and state AGs, New York and Delaware have taken a lead in calling for banks to also address MBS liability.

“We have a close working relationship with New York,” Delaware deputy AG Ian McConnel told me Wednesday. McConnel said the states have been investigating the entire securitization process, from the documentation of mortgage loans backing securities offerings to communications with investors after underlying loans began to go into default. (The New York AG’s counterclaims in the BofA settlement, for instance, asserted that BNY Mellon breached its duties as trustee in the Countrywide MBS offerings because the bank didn’t demand documentation from Countrywide when the notes were offered, and didn’t notify investors when underlying mortgages defaulted.)

The proposed BofA deal would wipe out Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon’s liability to investors for much of the same alleged wrongdoing that the New York and Delaware AGs are investigating. It would also enact changes in how BofA services mortgage loans, which is what the larger AG group is negotiating with mortgage lenders. The settlement between BofA, BNY Mellon, and Countrywide investors, in other words, attempts to do privately what 50 attorneys general are trying to accomplish in the regulatory arena.

And that’s why the deal has run afoul of the New York and Delaware AGs. With their intervention motions, New York and Delaware are telling the banks that they can’t evade regulators. Try it and you’ll get the stunning fraud counterclaims New York asserted last week.

“Is is possible to reach a settlement with investors? Yes, it is,” said Delaware deputy AG McConnel. “You do that by including more than the trustee, the underwriter, and 22 investors in talks. A settlement has to be done in a holistic way.”

That’s a pretty clear invitation to BofA and BNY Mellon. Now we’ll have to see if the banks accept.

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Before Thursday night, opposition to Bank of America’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with Countrywide mortgage-backed securities investors consisted of a handful of investor groups represented by a handful of law firms. Even if you counted the six Federal Home Loan Banks that have moved to intervene but haven’t yet gone on record opposing the deal, intervenors represented less than 7 percent of all Countrywide MBS noteholders. The 22 gargantuan institutional investors that negotiated the settlement were a much more potent force.

That all changed when New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman -- in a move that stunned deal proponents — filed an explosive motion to intervene in the $8.5 billion settlement. Schneiderman didn’t just register his opposition to the proposed settlement, which he said had been reached “without ever giving beneficiaries or their representatives an opportunity to test [whether] the proposed settlement is reasonable.” He went far, far beyond mere opposition: Schneiderman accused the Countrywide MBS trustee, Bank of New York Mellon, of breaching its fiduciary duty and said that Bank of America may have aided and abetted the breach. And to show that he was serious about those assertions, Schneiderman actually filed counterclaims against BNY Mellon along with his intervention motion.

The countersuit — a truly revolutionary filing — alleges three causes of action against BNY Mellon, in what is thought to be the first time the AG has accused an MBS trustee of fraud. Schneiderman claimed the bank breached its duty to investors because the settlement includes indemnification for the trustee — a “direct financial benefit” for BNY Mellon, according to the AG’s filing. Schneiderman also asserted that BNYM let down Countrywide MBS investors long before proposing the $8.5 billion settlement, by failing to notify certificate holders that underlying Countrywide mortgages were in default. Finally, the New York AG accused Bank of New York Mellon of securities fraud under New York’s Martin Act.

Schneiderman didn’t claim that New York pension funds actually have a stake in the Countrywide MBS trusts. Instead, he claimed standing under the parens patriae doctrine, asserting that he intervened “to protect the interests of the public and absent investors.” And that raises a question that Bank of New York Mellon — once it recovers from the shock of the AG’s filing — is sure to argue to Judge Barbara Kapnick as she weighs whether to approve the proposed settlement. Are investors — and the public at large — better off if the New York AG kills the proposed BofA settlement?

There are a lot of ways to look at the question. In the narrowest interpretation, will investors be able to recover more money for breach of warranty claims against Countrywide than they would under the settlement? Maybe. There have only been a few investor put-back cases filed against Countrywide, mostly by David Grais of Grais & Ellsworth, and they’re not far enough along to lay odds on their success. Mayer Brown, which represents BNY Mellon in the BofA proposed settlement, argues that a lot of obstacles stand between Countrywide noteholders and a windfall recovery from Bank of America. Those range from the loan-by-loan evaluation investors will have to make of individual underlying mortgages to Bank of America’s claim that it’s not liable for Countrywide’s failings.

Grais may be able to surmount those obstacles, which is why his goal in opposing the proposed BofA deal seems to be to force the bank to permit opt-outs for investors who want to take their chances in litigation. If the settlement blows up, however, every Countrywide MBS investor is going to have to slug it out in court, and they’re certainly not all represented by lawyers who are prepared for a long, expensive battle with BofA that may end with them getting nothing.

The AG’s filing, moreover, has implications beyond the BofA case. Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon certainly bear a heavy load of responsibility for the MBS fiasco. The New York AG has been engaged in an investigation of their (and other banks’) various failures as a trustee, MBS issuer, and mortgage servicer. But this settlement was at least an attempt to mitigate the damage BofA and BNY Mellon have caused investors — and for some reason, Schneiderman waited until now to claim that BNY Mellon committed fraud and that BofA may have abetted it. That timing gives little incentive to any of the other banks facing billions of dollars in MBS breach-of-warranty liability to reach global deals with investors. Why spend months negotiating a settlement if the New York AG, under the broad aegis of protecting the public, attacks you after you reach a deal?

The AG’s filing gives MBS trustees even less incentive to push for investor settlements. Trustees have been incredibly slow to take action against MBS issuers, which is why regulators like Schneiderman are scrutinizing them. Bank of New York Mellon took a bold step when it hired Jason Kravitt and Matthew Ingber of Mayer Brown to talk to the Gibbs & Bruns group of 22 investors, instead of continuing to resist investors’ calls for action against MBS issuers. Its reward for reaching a deal with the Gibbs & Bruns investors? A Martin Act suit. Given that Schneiderman hasn’t brought Martin Act claims against MBS trustees that haven’t proposed global settlements, why would any trustee try to engineer a deal? For the banks that issued mortgage-backed securities and the banks that acted as trustees on MBS offerings, the Schneiderman filings are a very good reason to keep their profiles low by quietly defending cases by those investors with the fortitude to sue.

Then there’s the issue of the mortgage servicing provisions in the BofA settlement proposal. BofA and the Gibbs & Bruns group have touted the servicing provisions, which call for Bank of America to outsource loan service to companies tasked with renegotiating troubled loans, rather than pushing homeowners into default. Bank of America, in fact, regarded the loan modification provisions of the MBS settlement as template for solving the foreclosure crisis.

The AG’s filing, on the other hand, blasted the settlement’s servicing provisions as “too vague and ill-defined to provide any concrete value to investors.” Schneiderman complained that Bank of America’s poor track record in modifying troubled loans underscored the inadequacy of the servicing aspects of the settlement. The AG is in the midst of talks to reach nationwide mortgage modification deals with a host of banks, so I’m sure he’s speaking knowledgeably. But as a matter of tactics, he doesn’t seem to be sending a message of cooperation to BofA — or other banks.

Finally, there’s the message the AG sent to New York businesses. BNY Mellon’s response to the AG was as remarkable, in its way, as the AG’s filing. “The allegations by the New York attorney general are outrageous, baseless, unsupported by fact and law and we will fight them if necessary in court,” the bank said in a rare display of adjectives by a financial institution. “We are confident that we have fulfilled in all respects our responsibilities as trustee. The AG’s action is misguided and fails to comprehend the role of the trustee and the benefit the settlement would provide to investors.”

A BNY Mellon spokesman told me the bank didn’t want to comment on the broader implications of the AG’s filing, but directed me to Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a business development non-profit. She said that the AG’s “careless action” hurts New York’s standing as a financial center.

“It’s disappointing from the standpoint of the business community that the AG would make a fraud accusation against a major financial institution — in the press,” she told me. “And to not have any consultation with the institution? The bank was blindsided by what appears to be an outrageous charge.” (The AG’s press office declined comment.)

Thursday’s filing unquestionably changes the tenor of the BofA MBS settlement. It could end up changing a lot of other things as well.

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