Paoloni v. Goldstein

200 F.R.D. 644, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8105, 2001 WL 705643
CourtDistrict Court, D. Colorado
DecidedMay 21, 2001
DocketNo. CIV.A. 01-K-275
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 200 F.R.D. 644 (Paoloni v. Goldstein) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Paoloni v. Goldstein, 200 F.R.D. 644, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8105, 2001 WL 705643 (D. Colo. 2001).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

KANE, Senior District Judge.

This matter is before me on the Reliance Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Standing. This action concerns an alleged scheme by Defendants to defraud investors through the sale of viatical settlement con[645]*645tracts.1 Plaintiffs in this action are four individual investors in viatical settlement contract programs allegedly created and promoted by Defendants (“Plaintiff-Investors”) and thirty-five financial planners and financial planning firms that sold investments in these programs to their customers (collectively “Plaintiff-Brokers”).2 Plaintiffs seek to recover the amount of these investments in Defendants’ viatical settlement programs and other relief pursuant to claims under the federal RICO statute, the equivalent Florida state statute, common law tort and contract law and other theories. In the subject motion, the Reliance Defendants argue this action should be dismissed because the Plaintiff-Brokers do not have standing to assert the claims of their customers. For the reasons stated below, I deny the Reliance Defendants’ motion.

I. Standard for Decision

A motion to dismiss asserting that the plaintiff does not have standing to maintain the action is a challenge to the Court’s subject matter jurisdiction brought pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Such a motion may be granted only when “ ‘it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff could prove no set of facts entitling it to relief.’ ” United States v. Colorado Supreme Court, 87 F.3d 1161, 1164 (10th Cir.1996)(quoting Ash Creek Mining v. Lujan, 969 F.2d 868, 870 (10th Cir.1992)). Although the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing the elements of standing, at this point in the litigation I accept all well-pleaded facts as true and construe all reasonable allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.3 Id.

In order to determine the Plaintiffs’ standing to bring this action, I must consider both “constitutional limitations on federal-court jurisdiction and prudential limitations on'its exercise.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). Constitutional standing requirements are drawn from Article III and require Plaintiffs to allege (1) a concrete and particularized actual or imminent injury (2) that is fairly traceable to Defendants’ conduct (3) which a favorable court decision will redress. Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri v. Pierce, 213 F.3d 566, 573 (10th Cir.2000), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 121 S.Ct. 1078, 148 L.Ed.2d 955 (2001). As potentially relevant here, prudential standing principles generally require a plaintiff to assert his own rights, rather than those belonging to third parties. Id.; see Warth, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197.

II. Plaintiffs’ Standing to Maintain This Action

Neither party incorporated either the standard of review or the legal standards for standing in their arguments on this issue. I have framed their arguments to comport with these governing principles.

A. Constitutional Standing

In their Amended Complaint, the Plaintiff-Investors allege they were injured when they purchased viatical settlement contracts in Defendants’ programs as a result of Defendants’ false and misleading offering [646]*646material. This is clearly enough to establish the constitutional standing for the Plaintiff-Investors to bring this action.

In response to the Reliance Defendants’ challenge to their standing in this action, the Plaintiff-Brokers allege their customers were similarly injured when they purchased Defendants’ viatical settlement contracts, and that Plaintiff-Brokers have constitutional standing to assert their customers’ claims against Defendants because each Plaintiff-Broker has “obtained and/or is obtaining assignment of claims from each individual purchaser” to whom they sold Defendants’ viatical settlement contracts. The specific customers and claims obtained or being obtained by assignment are specified in more than twenty exhibits to the Amended Complaint.

As noted above, for purposes of deciding a motion to dismiss I must take these allegations as true and construe them in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff-Brokers. Under this standard, I find that the Plaintiff-Brokers are assignees of the claims their customers have against the Defendants. As such the Plaintiff-Brokers have standing to prosecute these claims against Defendants. See, e.g., Vermont Agency of Natural Res. v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765, 773-74, 120 S.Ct. 1858, 146 L.Ed.2d 836 (2000) (“assignee of a claim has standing to assert the injury in fact, suffered by the assignor”); Feeder Line Towing Service, Inc. v. Toledo, Peoria & Western R.R. Co., 539 F.2d 1107, 1110 n. 7 (7th Cir.1976) (assignee has standing to assert assignor’s claim).

The Reliance Defendants note that the Plaintiff-Brokers have yet to produce any assignment contracts and urge that I immediately dismiss all claims for which nó assignment has been made. Given the standard of review on motions to dismiss, I decline to do so. I agree, however, that Plaintiff-Brokers only have standing to prosecute investor claims that have been validly assigned to them and that Defendants are entitled to notice of the specific claims at issue for purposes of discovery and trial preparation. Accordingly, I will order Plaintiff-Brokers to amend their complaint to specify the claims for which they have received assignments and which are therefore at issue in this action when I set this matter for its initial Scheduling Conference.4 This information can then be utilized by the parties to develop the stipulated Scheduling and Discovery Order to be issued following the conference. Of course, Plaintiffs will retain the right to seek leave to amend them complaint to add additional claims or parties until the deadline stated in the Scheduling and Discovery Order.

The Reliance Defendants also ask me to rule at this time that the assignment contracts between the Plaintiff-Brokers and their customers are invalid because the Plaintiff-Brokers are also potentially liable to their customers in connection with their customers’ purchase of these contracts. The Reliance Defendants contend this possible liability creates a conflict of interest between the Plaintiff-Brokers and their customers that renders any assignment contract between them invalid as matter of public policy. I disagree. The Reliance Defendants fail to identify any authority supporting their position that a conflict of interest between parties to an assignment contract renders that contract void.

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Bluebook (online)
200 F.R.D. 644, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8105, 2001 WL 705643, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/paoloni-v-goldstein-cod-2001.