A federal judge handed a legal defeat to Standard & Poor's, ruling that a lawsuit in which Connecticut accused it of fraudulently inflating credit ratings to win business should be moved back to the state court where it began, Reuters reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill, in a decision reached on Wednesday, said S&P and its parent, McGraw-Hill Cos., waited too long to move the March 2010 lawsuit by Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen to federal court from state court. He did not rule on the case's merits. The decision came two days after the largest U.S. credit rating agency asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss the U.S. Department of Justice's $5 billion civil fraud lawsuit filed in February over its ratings.
