Wells Fargo & Co. lost a bid to throw out a lawsuit by Los Angeles in the city’s renewed effort to hold mortgage lenders liable for record foreclosures during the collapse of the U.S. housing market, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles, without ruling on the merits of the claims, today said the city’s allegations that the bank targeted minority lenders with “predatory loans” were legally sufficient at this stage to proceed with the case. The second-largest U.S. city separately sued Wells Fargo, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. last year, saying the three mortgage lenders engaged in discriminatory practices since at least 2004, placing minority borrowers in loans they couldn’t afford and driving up the number of foreclosures in their neighborhoods.
