A superior court judge has turned down Standard & Poor’s motion to dismiss Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s lawsuit against it. Blumenthal, who filed companion complaints against Moody’s Corp, and Fitch Inc., is accusing the credit rating agency of issuing artificially low ratings to municipalities. He claims that this ended up costing taxpayers millions of dollars in unnecessary bond insurance and high interest rates.
S & P’s parent company McGraw-Hills Cos. had moved to dismiss for improper venue by claiming that a mandatory exclusive forum provision in the S&P Terms and Conditions barred the case from being filed in Connecticut. McGraw-Hills argued that the internal laws of the State of New York are supposed to govern the agreement and that the courts there are to serve as the exclusive forums for any disputes stemming from the agreement.
Superior Court Judge Robert Shapiro, however, denied the motion to dismiss. He said that under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, the state has a number of sovereign powers and that one of them lets the commission of consumer protection request that the state’s attorney general enforce CUTPA in state superior court.
Blumenthal called Shapiro’s decision a victory, while saying that credit rating agencies will likely continue to avoid being held accountable for misconduct. Meantime, a spokesperson for S & P told BNA last month that the lawsuit against the credit ratings agency has no factual merit.
The ratings lawsuits against Moody’s, S & P, and Fitch will now go forward in state court.
Related Web Resources:
Ratings case against S&P to proceed, MarketWatch, August 21, 2010
Richard Blumenthal, CT AG, Sues Moody’s, S&P, Says They Knowingly Falsified Debt Ratings, Huffington Post, March 10, 2010
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