Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp. is facing a class-action lawsuit in California that accuses a former subsidiary, LandSafe Appraisal Services Inc., of inflating assessments of property values to boost mortgage volumes in the lead-up to the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported May 9.

LandSafe was the appraisals arm of Countrywide Financial Corp., which BofA purchased in 2008. BofA sold LandSafe to CoreLogic Inc. in 2015.

According to BofA's Form 10-Q, BofA and certain subsidiaries were named as defendants in two class-action lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The actions were consolidated in November 2016 for pretrial purposes, and on Feb. 8, 2018, the court granted the plaintiffs' motion for class certification.

BofA has filed a petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for permission to appeal the class certification decision.