Bunuel
One hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis, robo-signing, in which banks blindly accepted legal documents without checking them for accuracy or authenticity, has led to a series of lawsuits against large banks such as Bank of America and Citigroup.
(A) One hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis, robo-signing, in which banks
(B) Robo-signing was one hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis, in which banks
(C) Robo-signing, which was one hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis and which banks
(D) One hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis was robo-signing, in which banks
(E) One hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis was robo-signing, and banks
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
A.This problem is a good example of one in which you must look later in the sentence at the non-underlined portion.
In (B), (D), and (E) you cannot say: X was Y, has led… You need to have some subject for the verb “has led”.
In (C) the second “which” clause incorrectly states: “Robo-signing….which banks blindly accepted legal documents” It needs to be “Robo-signing…in which banks blindly accepted legal documents” Only (A) sets up the sentence correctly. The first portion “One hallmark of the mortgage-banking crisis” is an appositive modifier that starts the sentence giving us extra information about robo-signing.
The “in which banks blindly accepted legal documents” properly follows “robo-signing” and can be removed to see that the verb “has led” properly links to “robo-signing”.
Answer is (A).