The law treats some acts as grave enough that it won't give them legal effect unless a person with knowledge of the facts attests to them. The oath of a witness tends to give the act heft. It suggests you can trust what the witness says.
But what happens when the witness botches the oath?
The subprime residential mortgage business got much of its lending money from big banks. Wall Street in turn acquired the cash by pooling thousands of subprime mortgages into securities and selling the paper to investors.
In 2007, Lone Star bought $61 million of such securities from Barclays Bank and Barclays Capital. The deal documents