Late last week, rulings were issued in a cluster of cases that BB&R has been following. The rulings, in class action law suits against the former Wachovia (purchased in early 2009 by Wells Fargo), while not the first major rulings to emanate from mortgage-related business models being pursued at the time of the meltdown, came out of the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, which, is one of the more relevant U.S. District courts in the country, because it catches a relatively high percentage of major financial industry-related cases.

You can read about the rulings here. While some of the claims will be allowed to go forward, the multiple dismissals and sharp reduction of the number of claims is a good example of agressive advocacy and limiting exposure within otherwise dangerous cases by patiently using the court's procedural process and forcing Plaintiffs to meet certain benchmarks before rushing to settle. For those "court watchers" in our readership, the subject cases are In re: Wachovia Equity Securities Litigation, case number 1:08-cv-06171; Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP v. Wachovia Corp. et al., case number 1:09-cv-04473; FC Holdings AB et al. v. Wells Fargo & Co. et al., case number 1:09-cv-05466; and In re: Wachovia Preferred Securities and Bond/Notes Litigation, case number 1:09-cv-06351; in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.