New York, NY (February 5, 2013) – A trial team from Venable LLP won a complete victory in its December 2012 bench trial in Orange County (California) Superior Court in connection with the Impac securitization disputes which the firm had been litigating since October 2010.
Ed O’Toole and Matt McLaughlin from the firm’s New York office headed a bicoastal Venable litigation team that featured Doreen Martin (NY), Matt Taggart (LA) and Kaveri Arora (NY). The trial was the culmination of a matter that began when the securitization trustee, Deutsche Bank, filed a petition in Orange County Probate Court seeking “instructions” because of an alleged scrivener’s error in the master agreement directing how payments of principal and interest must be made to investors.
Venable represented three of the senior-most institutional investors in the reformation action in which more than $100 Million was at issue.
The securitization issuer, Impac, had to convince the court by clear and convincing evidence that a mutual mistake was made in the agreement when it was drafted. The Venable team opposed that effort and, through discovery and at trial, was able to severely undermine Impac’s evidentiary submissions, as well as the legal and equitable arguments they raised in favor of reformation.
At the conclusion of the bench trial, the Venable team joined attorneys from Quinn Emmanuel and Kasowitz Benson in preparing a “proposed decision and order” at the Judge’s request. Late today, the firm was notified that the Judge adopted the proposed decision and order in its entirety, even characterizing the proposed decision's analysis and conclusions as “brilliantly expressed.”
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