Big bank catches a break in mortgage lawsuit

A big bank is off the hook in a lawsuit concerning mortgage-backed securities

A big bank is off the hook in a lawsuit concerning mortgage-backed securities, according to a Trefis report.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has thrown out a suit against Swiss banking giant UBS. The suit, filed in 2010 by the Pension Trust Fund for Operating Engineers, alleged that the bank misrepresented the quality of mortgages backing securities it had sold to the pension fund in 2007.

The fund bought $2.5bn in the securities from UBS that year, according to Trefis. The securities were backed by mortgages from Countrywide and IndyMac – two companies that would later become infamous for their huge subprime mortgage holdings.

The appeals court dismissed the suit because it said the pension fund had waited too long to sue UBS. The court ruled that in waiting more than two years to file the lawsuit, the fund seemed more interested in the possibility of scoring some money in the wake of similar settlements than in holding UBS to account.