Irving Picard, the trustee seeking money for Bernard Madoff's victims has won the right to immediately appeal a ruling that took away more than $19 billion of his claims against JPMorgan Chase, Madoff's main bank for two decades. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan last month found that Picard, as trustee for the estate of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, lacked power to bring a variety of claims against the bank for harm caused to former Madoff customers. Instead, the judge said, those claims belonged to the customers themselves. At least two lawsuits on behalf of some of those customers have since been filed. Rather than pursue what remained of his case in a federal bankruptcy court, Picard reached an agreement with JPMorgan to allow an appeal of McMahon's ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.  Picard says an immediate appeal would provide "much needed finality" as to whether his claims are viable, and could even make a settlement more likely. Rulings against Picard by McMahon and her colleague Jed Rakoff, if they survive on appeal, have wiped out roughly one-third of the trustee's more than $103 billion of asserted claims against banks and other defendants. JPMorgan has said it will defend its case, and maintained that there was no showing that anyone at the bank knew of Madoff's Ponzi scheme.  [Reuters 12/2/11]