Cooperativa Ahorro Y Credito Aguada v. Kidder, Peabody & Co.

777 F. Supp. 153, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16615, 1991 WL 237553
CourtDistrict Court, D. Puerto Rico
DecidedOctober 31, 1991
DocketCiv. 89-1706 (JAF)
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 777 F. Supp. 153 (Cooperativa Ahorro Y Credito Aguada v. Kidder, Peabody & Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cooperativa Ahorro Y Credito Aguada v. Kidder, Peabody & Co., 777 F. Supp. 153, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16615, 1991 WL 237553 (prd 1991).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

FUSTE, District Judge.

The plaintiff, Cooperativa Ahorro y Cré-dito Aguada (“Coop”), is a single-branch savings and loan institution, which brought claims under the Federal Securities Acts, local law fraud statutes, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) against its account representative, Almonte, and his employers Kidder, Peabody & Co. (“Kidder”) and Paine Webber Incorporated (“Paine Webber”) during the period he handled Coop’s account. In an earlier opinion, Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Aguada v. Kidder, Peabody & Co., 758 F.Supp. 64, 75 (D.P.R.1991), this court dismissed some of plaintiff's claims and stayed the disposition of the remaining claims pending decision by the Supreme Court in Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 2778, 115 L.Ed.2d 321 (1991). The facts were extensively discussed in an earlier opinion; however, we will reiterate the essentials here.

Plaintiff Coop claims that defendant Al-monte, while working for Kidder, fraudulently induced the Coop to invest more than three and a half million dollars in Drexel Burnham “junk bond funds.” Plaintiff bought Drexel Burnham Lambert Unit Trust Series 10 and 2 (“Drexel assets”) through Almonte over a period of seven months, from June 1986 to December 16, 1986. When Almonte moved from Kidder to Paine Webber in June 1987, he took the Coop account with him. On December 3, 1988, the plaintiff, responding to general rumors that Drexel “junk bond” investments were increasingly unstable, requested information about the value of its Drex-el assets. Coop claims Almonte sent it a letter in which he intentionally misstated the value of those assets. Coop further claims that all account statements sent to plaintiff thereafter omitted the value of the Drexel assets or falsely stated that the value was not available to Paine Webber. The claim is that these misrepresentations induced Coop to hold the Drexel assets until the trusts were liquidated by the trustee, in July 1989, having fallen below 50% of their original principal value.

In the previous opinion, this court dismissed all claims brought against Paine Webber alleging securities violations for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. All RICO claims brought against Paine Webber and Kidder were also dismissed for failure to state a claim, as was the 18 U.S.C. § 1962(b) RICO claim against Almonte. The remaining 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) RICO claim against Al-monte, along with the securities claims against Almonte and Kidder, and the pendent local law fraud claims against the three defendants were stayed pending resolution of Lampf. 1

*155 I. The Implications of Lampf

In Lampf the Supreme Court found that the federal statute of limitations applicable to the express causes of action in section 13 of the Securities Act of 1933, 15 U.S.C. § 77m, and to certain of the express actions in the 1934 Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78i(e), 78r(c), and 78cc(b), should also be applied to causes of action under section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b). By adopting this particular statute of limitations, the Supreme Court resolved the unstable situation created by its earlier decisions in Del Costello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983), and Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987), which had suggested that the adoption of an analogous state statute of limitations might no longer be appropriate where there existed a suitable federal limitations period. The instability resulted from the lower court response, for while some lower courts began to apply the federal standard, others continued to borrow the state standard. 2 The new federal statute of limitations for section 10(b) actions, which derives from other provisions of the 1934 Act, was adopted in Lampf because it was “designed to accommodate a balance of interests very similar to that at stake in this litigation.” Lampf, 111 S.Ct. at 2775. The “one and three year” structure allows the plaintiff one year from discovery of the deception and three years from the actual commission of the fraud to file. While the absolute bar of three years might seem strict, it was adopted by the Court because it more clearly reflects the remedial purposes of the statute.

An application of the Lampf standard to the instant case would bar the plaintiffs claims under section 10(b). With the federal limitations period, the predicate acts necessary to prove a claim under section 10(b) must have been committed within the three-year period preceding the date of filing. According to the Bimbaum rule, a “predicate act” is limited to the actual purchase or sale of a security, Birnbaum v. Newport Steel Corp., 193 F.2d 461 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 956, 72 S.Ct. 1051, 96 L.Ed. 1356 (1952) (adopted by the Supreme Court in Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 95 S.Ct. 1917, 44 L.Ed.2d 539 (1975)). Therefore, the relevant predicate acts in this case for all claims under the Securities Acts are the purchases of Drexel Burnham Lambert Unit Trust Series 10 and 2 (“Drexel assets”) by Coop through Almonte. These purchases all took place before December 28, 1986, or more than three years before the filing of the action on December 28, 1989.

Plaintiff, however, argues that the federal statute of limitations period should not be applied in the instant case. An application of the federal statute of limitations to the instant case would entail retroactive application of a new rule, violating the standards established in Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971). 3 Under Chevron Oil, when a new statute of limitations period is established by the Supreme Court, it should be applied prospectively if “it overrules clearly established Circuit precedent on which the complaining party was entitled to rely, ...

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Bluebook (online)
777 F. Supp. 153, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16615, 1991 WL 237553, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cooperativa-ahorro-y-credito-aguada-v-kidder-peabody-co-prd-1991.