On February 23, 2018, Judge Lorna G. Schofield of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Plaintiffs’ objection to U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn’s opinion and order denying Plaintiffs’ request to re-underwrite a sample of loans in RMBS trusts in order to establish liability and damages in their suits against HSBC Bank as RMBS trustee. Judge Schofield found no clear error in Judge Netburn’s opinion, which held that sampling cannot establish either damages or liability because the contract requires Plaintiffs to prove that HSBC breached its contractual obligations as trustee on a loan-by-loan basis. The opinion held that “a sampling is just that, and by definition cannot provide loan specific information as to any loan outside the sample.” [Sampling Order]