(Dow Jones Newswires) -- A pension fund sued Moody's on Wednesday, alleging the credit-ratings agency misrepresented or failed to disclose that it had assigned "excessively high ratings to bonds backed by risky sub-prime mortgages".

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, the Teamsters Local 282 Pension Trust Fund alleged that the New York company's ratings of bonds backed by sub-prime mortgages - including bonds packaged as collateralised debt obligations - were materially misleading to investors concerning the quality and relative risk of those investments.