In Merrimack County, New Hampshire, MSNBC.com reports:

In marketing, advertising and testimony before Congress, Countrywide Home Loans has said repeatedly that it is working hard to modify the mortgages of financially strapped borrowers caught up in the subprime meltdown.

• But in a New Hampshire court, attorneys for the lending giant are singing a different tune, describing such assurances as “mere commercial puffery.”

• Saying the modification offers are “only Countrywide’s vague advertisements,” attorneys for the lender are asking the court to throw out a lawsuit alleging breach of good faith, fraud, negligence and misrepresentation, which was filed on behalf of a family that was refused a loan modification by the California-based company.

• “It’s breathtaking,” attorney Mary Frances Stewart of Concord, N.H., said of Countrywide’s response to the lawsuit she and co-counsel Krista Atwater filed in Merrimack County Superior Court. In its response, “Countrywide is saying, ‘We don’t have any obligation or even necessarily the intention of actually modifying these loans,’ and yet they’re representing that they do.”

For more, see In court, Countrywide calls its ads ‘puffery’ (Defending lawsuit, mortgage company mocks loan modification assurances) (go here for entire story on one web page).