District Court denies class certification in RMBS action

Courts Securities RMBS Class Action Mortgages

On February 15, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied class certification in an action brought by an investment company against a bank acting as trustee for five residential mortgage-backed securities trusts in which the company invested. The investment company filed a class action suit against the trustee asserting claims for breach of contract, breach of the duty of trust, and violations of the Trust Indenture Act. Among other things, the allegations concern whether the trustee “failed to fulfil certain contractual duties triggered by the discovery of breaches of ‘representations and warranties’” when the underlying mortgages allegedly were found not to be of the promised quality. The investment company also alleged that the trustee failed to exercise its rights to require the companies that sold the mortgages in question “to cure, substitute, or repurchase the breaching loans.”

In dismissing class certification, the court found that questions of law or fact common to all class members did not dominate individual issues. The court held that there was no proof that the liability claims of potential class members who held certificates in one trust would be relevant to the claims of other potential class members in one of the other trusts, and that the individualized questions “involve relatively complex legal and factual inquiries—requiring considerable resources in comparison to those questions which are capable of class-wide resolution.”