Jonathan Rosenberg of O'Melveny & Myers

Bank of America has certainly taken its lumps in the past week over the subprime meltdown. The bank is shelling out more than $10 billion as part of the government’s global foreclosure settlement, paying another $1 billion to settle False Claims Act allegations over subprime mortgages, and on Monday it lost a bid to knock out investor class claims over its 2008 Merrill Lynch acquisition.

But BofA also scored a major victory in litigation involving the bank’s biggest mortgage-backed securities headache, Countrywide Financial. On Feb. 2 Los Angeles federal district court judge Mariana Pfaelzer, who is overseeing the nationwide federal MBS litigation against Countrywide, dismissed Allstate Corporation’s successor liability and fraudulent conveyance claims against BofA. The judge entered her ruling with prejudice, absolving Bank of America from all liability in the Allstate case.

Winning on both the successor liability and fraudulent conveyance claims was a crucial test for Jonathan Rosenberg of O’Melveny & Myers, BofA’s national coordinating counsel on successor liability. Rosenberg argued the dismissal motion at a Jan. 23 hearing before Judge Pfaelzer, squaring off against Allstate’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

Judge Pfaelzer had ruled for Bank of America on the successor liability issue in the case before, concluding in October 2011 that the bank’s 2008 Countrywide acquisition did not constitute a de-facto merger. But the judge had not yet ruled squarely on Allstate’s claims that BofA structured its complex Countrywide acquisition as a fraudulent conveyance, leaving Countrywide with only non-performing assets in order to shield itself from MBS liability. And, as we’ve reported, Quinn Emanuel significantly beefed up its successor liability and fraudulent conveyance claims in Allstate’s amended complaint. Quinn Emanuel’s Daniel Brockett told us the firm put more evidence before Judge Pfaelzer than any judge has considered on the issue.

Rosenberg offered only a brief statement on the ruling: “The court’s thorough and thoughtful analysis of these and similar allegations in many different complaints speaks for itself,” he said.