Felix Salmon has put together a useful score cardfor the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) lawsuits against the banks.
The methodology is pretty simple. Count up the pages and the number of individual defendants, then add in points if the government is seeking punitive damages. It turns out that the bank with the highest score is JPMorgan Chase, which might surprise folks.
But JPMorgan's score is skewed by the fact that Bank of Americais actually involved in three law suits. There's the one against Bank of America itself, of course. (Weirdly, labeled "Bank_of_America_Other" in the government's online filings.) Then there's the suit against Countrywide Financial, which was acquired by Bank of America. And then another against Merrill Lynch, also acquired by Bank of America.
If you add the Salmon Scores together it brings Bank of America into the lead by a long shot.
Here's Salmon's full table.
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