Will Schneiderman Drop New Suit To Join Nationwide Mortgage Foreclosure Settlement?

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is in a bit of a bind. At his State of the Union address, President Obama named Schneiderman to co-chair a new Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group under the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. Days later, Schneiderman filed a massive lawsuit against several of the nation's largest banks (http://www.financialfraudlaw.com/lawblog/breaking-schneiderman-sues-major-banks-%E2%80%98deceptive-fraudulent-use%E2%80%99-mers/3290) charging that the creation and use of the national mortgage electronic registry system known as MERS had resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, harming homeowners and undermining the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process. 

Now, there reportedly is pressure on Schneiderman (pictured) to drop that suit as part of an anticipated $25 billion nationwide settlement with banks over their mortgage foreclosure failings.
 
We here at the Financial Fraud Law Blog and the Financial Fraud Law Report are wondering if Schneiderman will agree to drop the suit. Does he damage his burgeoning reputation if he agrees to do so for the same $25 billion number that has been bandied about for quite some time before he filed his newest action? If he doesn’t drop the suit, will he be seen as torpedoing the settlement, to the detriment of homeowners in states across the country?
 
Further thoughts on the state of the pending nationwide mortgage foreclosure settlement are in an excellent article, “California, N.Y. Are Among Fewer Than 10 Mortgage Deal Holdouts,” by David McLaughlin and Joel Rosenblatt, available at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-06/banks-in-mortgage-deal-are-said-to-demand-new-york-mers-lawsuit-be-dropped.html.