In re Baldwin-United Corp.

105 F.R.D. 475, 1 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1589, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21691
District Court, S.D. New York·Decided November 28, 1984·No. MDL No. 581-CLB·Published·Cited by 27 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

[Motion for Tentative Class Certification for Purpose of Settlement Hearing, and Notice of Proposed Settlement]

BRIEANT, District Judge.

These consolidated cases, transferred to the Southern District of New York by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on February 27, 1984, arise out of the sale by insurance company subsidiaries of Baldwin-United Corporation of certain contracts known to the Court as single premium deferred annuities (“SPDAs”). These SPDAs were issued principally between 1979 and May 1983 by National Investors Life Insurance Company, an Arkansas insurance corporation, and University Life Insurance Company of America, an Indiana insurance corporation. The annuities were sold to the public on a nation-wide basis through various broker-dealers and other entities.

In July 1983, the two issuing insurance companies, as well as four companies which reinsured the SPDAs in part, were placed in rehabilitation. The ultimate corporate parent of these six companies, Baldwin-United Corporation, entered bankruptcy proceedings pursuant to voluntary and involuntary petitions for reorganization filed on September 26, 1983. During 1983 and 1984 SPDA purchasers filed more than 90 federal civil actions alleging fraud and/or violations of the federal and state securities laws and other pendent state law claims. Finding that the initial forty actions' before it involved common questions of fact, the MDL Panel ordered that they be transferred to this district court for coordinated or consolidated pre-trial proceedings pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407. In re Baldwin-United Corporation Litigation, No. 581, 581 F.Supp. 739 (J.P.J.L. 1984).

This Court held a pre-trial conference on April 3, 1984 and thereafter entered pre-trial orders approving the creation of a plaintiff’s steering committee and providing, among other things, for the filing of sepa[478] rate consolidated class complaints with respect to each of the unrelated broker-dealer defendants. Since that time, liaison counsel for plaintiffs and for defendants have been engaged actively in pursuing the litigation goals of the parties and have appeared frequently before the Court for coordination of pre-trial proceedings. Familiarity of the reader with all such prior proceedings is assumed.

A recent significant event with which the within motion is concerned is the filing beginning on September 21, 1984 of fourteen stipulations of settlement between plaintiffs and the defendants in fourteen of the actions (the “settling actions”). The parties to the proposed settlements now request the Court (1) to certify tentative or conditional classes solely for the purpose of considering the proposed settlement; (2) to conduct a fairness hearing on whether the proposed settlements should be approved; and (3) to order that notice of the hearing be sent to members of the proposed class and to resolve issues affecting the content of such notice.

Class Certification

Whether this Court should certify a conditional settlement class solely for purposes of approving or disapproving a settlement already formulated by the parties is a controversial issue. On one hand, the current edition of the Manual for Complex Litigation, § 1.46 (5th ed. 1982) (“Manual”), concludes that tentative classes for the purpose of settlement ordinarily should not be formed. Id. at 60. Similarly there is an apparent inconsistency between the language of Rule 23, F.R.Civ.P., and a mechanism whereby formal class certification would be bypassed until a date when first notice of the pendency of a class action and notice of a proposed settlement are sent simultaneously to prospective class members. In re Franklin National Bank Securities Litigation, 574 F.2d 662, 671-72, n. 6, modified, 599 F.2d 1109 (2d Cir.1978). Since Rule 23(c) requires that class certification take place “as soon as practicable after the commencement of an action,” the practice of bypassing pre-set-tlement formal class certification is a subject of concern.1 On the other hand, many courts have employed this practice in the name of judicial efficiency in order to facilitate apparently beneficial settlement proposals.2

For the reasons set forth below, this Court finds that under the circumstances of the cases at bar, tentative class certification for settlement purposes only is appropriate at this time and is in the interests of Justice.

The current edition of the Manual lists nine policy reasons in support of its conclusion that settlement classes ought not be certified:

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In re Baldwin-United Corp., 105 F.R.D. 475, 1 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1589, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21691 (S.D.N.Y. 1984).

105 F.R.D. 475 (In re Baldwin-United Corp.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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