(Reuters) – Ambac Assurance Corp. won a bid to reinstate a fraudulent inducement claim against a unit of Credit Suisse Securities over a 2007 mortgage-backed securities transaction Ambac insured.
Ambac sued for what it called “pervasive and material misrepresentations” in the mortgage-backed security transaction pooling over 2,000 residential mortgage loans that Credit Suisse underwrote and its affiliate, DLJ Mortgage Capital Inc, sponsored.
Credit Suisse may not have had a duty to disclose certain information but New York state Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich said in a decision filed Thursday that the issue is “fact-intensive” and declined to dismiss the fraudulent inducement claim “at this time.”
In March 2007, New York-based Ambac issued a policy insuring payment of the principal and interest due under the $175 million securitization of 2,563 adjustable-rate home equity lines of credit.
Ambac claimed that Credit Suisse misrepresented attributes of the loans, applied more lax underwriting guidelines and less due diligence than it had claimed. Ambac also alleged that Credit Suisse said the transaction mirrored a prior securitization while failing to disclose that loan pool was filled with borrowers with little or no ability to repay.
Ambac's suit alleged that loans representing over 33 percent of the original loan balance, or more than $58 million, had defaulted, requiring Ambac to make over $46 million in claim payments.
Credit Suisse countered in court papers that “Ambac could have and should have known of the precise issues of which it now complains. Indeed, if the problems with the loans are as rampant and obvious as Ambac now alleges, then even minimal diligence would have uncovered them.”
Credit Suisse did not return a call for comment.
The case is Ambac Assurance Corporation v. DLJ Mortgage Capital Inc., 60070/2010, New York state Supreme Court (Manhattan).
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