Two pending mortgage lawsuits involving the Federal Housing Finance Agency, spawned by the housing crisis, have been winding down in recent weeks. One includes a win for Bank of America and the other includes oral arguments in an appeal by Nomura Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Department of Justice had until Nov. 21 to appeal an earlier ruling in which BofA, defending practices of Countrywide Financial, got out of having to pay more than $1 billion in penalties to the FHFA. Instead of appealing to the Supreme Court, the DOJ quietly let the deadline slip away. In 2014, a federal judge ordered the bank to pay $1.2 billion in civil penalties.