Asset Value Fund Ltd. Partnership v. Care Group, Inc.

179 F.R.D. 117, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5965, 1998 WL 214045
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedApril 29, 1998
DocketNo. 97 CIV. 1487(DLC)
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 179 F.R.D. 117 (Asset Value Fund Ltd. Partnership v. Care Group, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Asset Value Fund Ltd. Partnership v. Care Group, Inc., 179 F.R.D. 117, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5965, 1998 WL 214045 (S.D.N.Y. 1998).

Opinion

OPINION and ORDER

COTE, District Judge.

Plaintiff Asset Value Fund Limited Partnership (“Asset Value”) moves pursuant to Rule 15(a), Fed.R.Civ.P., to amend its Complaint so as to add a claim under the federal securities laws, and thereby to avoid dismissal of its action against defendant The Care Group, Inc. (“Care”) for lack of federal subject matter jurisdiction. For the reasons stated, the motion is denied, and the Complaint is accordingly dismissed.

[118]*118BACKGROUND

Asset Value’s Complaint, filed on March 5, 1997, asserted subject matter jurisdiction based solely on the diversity of citizenship of the parties. The principal causes of action in the Complaint alleged that Care had committed breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty in connection with a written stock purchase agreement, the Subscription Agreement, into which the parties had entered. In short, Asset Value claimed that Care was liable for failing to register in a timely fashion certain shares of Care’s common stock that Asset Value had contracted to buy and Care had pledged to register under the Securities Act of 1933. Asset Value’s claim for damages was based on the fact that the value of the shares had plummeted during the long period of time — including up through the date of the Complaint — that it was unable to sell the shares on the open market due to the lack of registration.

After a June 1997 Initial Pretrial Conference, the parties conducted several months of discovery, receiving multiple extensions of both fact and expert discovery; pursued settlement negotiations with the Magistrate Judge, which ultimately proved unsuccessful; and eventually were placed on the Court’s trial ready calendar, with a Pretrial Order due date of January 23, 1998. Three days before the Pretrial Order was due, the Court received a letter from defense counsel notifying it of a fact dispositively preclusive of diversity jurisdiction — that Asset Value’s sole general partner was a company incorporated in Delaware, the same state of incorporation as Care. Asset Value did not deny the accuracy of this claim, nor that such a situation negated diversity and deprived this Court of federal subject matter jurisdiction. Instead, Asset Value proposed that it be permitted to amend its Complaint — ostensibly based on newly discovered evidence — to allege a cause of action for securities fraud pursuant to Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, which would necessarily confer federal question jurisdiction upon this Court. Asset Value maintained that it had been “considering” making such an amendment “even before this jurisdictional defect was discovered,” but was unable to do so “because it did not have any ‘hard’ information” concerning Care’s securities violations until deposing certain of Care’s officials in the weeks before the Pretrial Order date.

The Court removed the case from the trial ready calendar and set a briefing schedule for Asset Value’s motion to amend, which was fully submitted in early March. By letter dated April 15, 1998, Asset Value requested that the motion be granted on the strength of a press release issued that day by Care, which according to Asset Value “amount[ed] to an outright confession that the allegations of the proposed securities fraud Count [were] essentially correct.”

DISCUSSION

The portion of Rule 15(a) on which Asset Value bases its motion provides that parties may amend their pleadings “only by leave of court or by written consent of the adverse party; and leave shall be freely given when justice so requires.” Rule 15(a), Fed. R.Civ.P. The Supreme Court has set forth clear guidelines on when courts should allow such amendments:

In the absence of any apparent or declared reason — such as undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of amendment, etc. — the leave sought should, as the rules require, be “freely given.”

Rachman Bag Co. v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 46 F.3d 230, 234 (2nd Cir.1995) (quoting Roman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962)). Delay alone does not warrant denial of leave to amend, id. at 234-35, but a motion to amend may be denied if the amendment would be futile, Foman, 371 U.S. at 182, 83 S.Ct. 227; see also Health-Chem Corp. v. Baker, 915 F.2d 805, 810 (2d Cir.1990).

Care asserts that amendments of pleadings with respect to jurisdiction — as it characterizes Asset Value’s proposed amendment here — are governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1653, which states: “Defective allegations of juris[119]*119diction may be amended, upon terms, in the trial or appellate courts.” The language of Section 1653 is “[i]n some respects ... at variance with the text of Rule 15 and arguably supersedes it. However, the cases do not reveal any conflict between the two.” 6 Charles Allen Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 1474 (2d ed.1990). Indeed, case law indicates that Section 1653 serves essentially as a specific application of Rule 15 that “expressly permits amendments to cure inadequate jurisdiction.” 3 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice § 15.14[3] (3d ed.1997) (describing similar functioning of Rule 15 and Section 1653). See also Corporacion Venezolana de Fomento v. Vintero Sales Corp., 477 F.Supp. 615, 618-19 & n. 5 (S.D.N.Y.1979) (noting similar applications of Rule 15 and Section 1653 although “the language of that section is more specific than that of’ the Rule). Asset Value does not dispute that eases construing motions to amend under Section 1653 are germane to its motion here, and in any event expressly notes its agreement with the proposition that “ § 1653 is supplemented by F.R.C.P. 15, which allows amendment of pleadings, amounting to a new filing, if the prerequisites set forth in the Rule are met.” (Quoting Seetransport Wiking Trader Schifffarhtsgesellschaft MBH & Co. v. Navimpex Centrala Navala, 793 F.Supp. 444, 447 (S.D.N.Y.1992 ), rev’d on other grounds 989 F.2d 572 (2d Cir.1993)). In these circumstances, and given that the Court sees little (if any) difference in the substantive principles governing application of Rule 15 and Section 1653, the Court considers cases discussing both provisions in resolving this motion.

Several points remain true under either standard. First, courts should “freely grant leave to amend jurisdictional allegations,” and should refrain from dismissing actions “based solely on a technical error in jurisdictional pleading.” 6 Moore § 15.14[3] (emphasis added) (discussing Rule 15). See also Oliver Schools, Inc. v. Foley, 930 F.2d 248, 252 (2d Cir.1991) (Rule 15);

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Xin v. Zhu
S.D. New York, 2022
CONNECTU LLC v. Zuckerberg
522 F.3d 82 (First Circuit, 2008)
Falise v. American Tobacco Co.
241 B.R. 63 (E.D. New York, 1999)
Weiss v. Alicea (In Re Alicea)
230 B.R. 492 (S.D. New York, 1999)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
179 F.R.D. 117, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5965, 1998 WL 214045, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/asset-value-fund-ltd-partnership-v-care-group-inc-nysd-1998.