Bank of America Corp. asked a New York appeals court to overturn portions of a lower-court ruling that improved bond insurer MBIA Inc.'s chances of recovering losses on mortgage loans, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The bank's Countrywide unit argued in a court hearing that State Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten was wrong when she ruled last year MBIA does not need to establish a "direct causal link" between misrepresentations about the loans and claims payments paid by the insurer. MBIA, which sued Countrywide in 2008, guarantees payments to investors that bought securities backed by pools of the lender's loans. The insurer says the loans were riskier than portrayed by Countrywide, and as they defaulted, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company was forced to pay investors.
