The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] ruled [order, PDF] Monday that the federal government, which took control of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) [official websites], may withhold certain documents sought in a suit filed by shareholders. The government fought [petition for writ of mandamus, PDF] the disclosure, claiming presidential privilege protected the documents. Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Kathleen O’Malley stated that the shareholders had “no particular need” for the documents in question.

The effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still reverberating through the legal system [JURIST backgrounder]. Last spring a federal judge unsealed an opinion [JURIST report] from late March ruling that the government did not have grounds to designate the major insurance company, Metlife, as “too big to fail,” a designation only four firms have received. The Financial Stability Oversight Council [official website] determined in 2014 that financial distress at Metlife could significantly affect the national economy and therefore the company deserves increased federal scrutiny. The judge held, however, that such a designation was unsupported by substantial evidence and disregards the costs that Metlife will inevitably suffer. In February of last year Morgan Stanley [corporate website] agreed to pay about $3.2 billion to settle charges [settlement agreement, PDF] that it misled investors in residential mortgage-backed securities [JURIST report]. In September the US Department of Justice [official website] unveiled a new policy [text, PDF] for white-collar crimes, which targets individuals accused of crimes instead of the companies [JURIST report].