[ by Howard Haykin ] JPMorgan Chase & Co received court approval to settle a private litigation matter, in which the bank was accused of conspiring to fix prices and rig bids on municipal bond transactions.  U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan granted preliminary approval of the accord on Monday night, calling it fair, reasonable and adequate. JPMorgan received court permission to pay as much as $44.6 million to resolve the private litigation.  Judge Marrero also conditionally certified a class of plaintiffs involved in transactions from 1992 through August 2011.  He scheduled a hearing to consider final approval for 12/14/12.  JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment. JPM's 2011 Settlement. The settlement follows JPMorgan's agreement last July to pay $211 million to settle charges by federal and state authorities that it had cheated government entities in 31 U.S. states on 93 transactions.  That accord was part of long-running criminal and civil investigations into whether banks and brokers conspired to overcharge state and local governments on investments.  BofA and UBS AG previously reached respective $137 million and $160 million settlements of those probes. How at Bids Gets Rigged. When municipalities sell bonds, they typically invest proceeds that they do not need to spend immediately in a variety of investment vehicles.  They usually hire brokers to seek out competitive bids, a process monitored by the IRS because of the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds. Bid-rigging often occurs - as it happened in JPMorgan's case - by a dealer who improperly wins some bids after arranging with bidding agents to get a "last look" at its competitors' bids.  In other cases, JPMorgan purposely submitted non-winning bids, including bids to satisfy tax regulations, regulators said. Under its settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, JPMorgan admitted responsibility for illegal conduct by former employees.  In settling with the SEC, the bank did not admit wrongdoing. Among the plaintiffs in the private litigation ... are the city of Baltimore and government entities in Mississippi and Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co also have settled their portions of that litigation, which named more than two dozen defendants. The case is In re: Municipal Derivatives Antitrust Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 08-02516. For the Plaintiffs: Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld, William Carmody of Susman Godfrey, and William Isaacson of Boise, Schiller, & Flexner. [Reuters, 6/5/12]