Seiden v. Nicholson

69 F.R.D. 681, 22 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 871
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedJanuary 30, 1976
DocketNo. 74 C 3117
StatusPublished
Cited by58 cases

This text of 69 F.R.D. 681 (Seiden v. Nicholson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Seiden v. Nicholson, 69 F.R.D. 681, 22 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 871 (N.D. Ill. 1976).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ROBSON, Senior District Judge.

This cause is before the court on the plaintiffs’ motion for a class action determination pursuant to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For the reasons hereinafter stated, this motion shall be granted as to all of the plaintiffs’ . claims under consideration here except the common law fraud claim alleged in Count Y of the First Consolidated and Amended Complaint. This court determines that henceforth Messrs. Robert S. Bassman, Murray Seiden, Seymour Trager and Marshall Weinstein shall be the sole representatives of the class.

The plaintiffs have filed a First Consolidated and Amended Complaint asserting that the action is brought pursuant to Sections 10(b) (15 U.S.C. § 78j(b)), 14 (15 U.S.C. § 78n), and 20 (15 U.S.C. § 78t) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the rules promulgated thereunder and principles of common law. Jurisdiction is predicated upon Section 27 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and principles of pendent jurisdiction. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants, directly and indirectly, used means and instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and of the mails, and the facilities of national securities markets in connection with the acts and transactions alleged in their complaint.

Basically, the plaintiffs assert that the defendants, other than Dreyfus Fund, Inc., engaged in a continuing course of fraudulent conduct, the purpose and effect of which were to artificially inflate the market price of CNA Financial Corp. (hereinafter referred to as CNA) securities and cause the plaintiffs to purchase CNA securities for an excessive consideration during the period of approximately January 1, 1969 to approximately December 31, 1974.

The defendants’ alleged wrongful course of conduct included the issuance of annual reports, interim reports, proxy statements, press releases, and other pronouncements which had the cumulative effect of artificially inflating CNA’s income and prospects. The false picture was purportedly the result of CNA’s non-disClosures and misrepresentations relating to two main areas of CNA’s business: its insurance operations and its real estate operations.

[683]*683The motion of the plaintiffs which is before the court is solely concerned with Counts I, II, V and VI of the First Consolidated and Amended Complaint. Counts III, IV and VII are derivative counts, and, accordingly, are inappropriate for consideration at this time.

The plaintiffs have defined the allegedly injured class for Counts I, II and V “as all those persons who purchased or acquired CNA securities during the period of approximately January 1, 1969 to approximately December 31, 1974, and sustained damages thereby.” Paragraph 8, First Consolidated and Amended Complaint. The plaintiffs have defined the class bringing the Count VI claim which relates to the Loews’ tender offer as “all persons who tendered their CNA securities pursuant to the aforesaid tender offer and did not receive payment therefor on or prior to December 3, 1974.” Paragraph 62, First Consolidated and Amended Complaint. The defendants have specifically preserved for the future, when discovery has better elucidated the claims of the plaintiffs, any contest regarding the plaintiffs’ class definition in paragraph 8 of the First Consolidated and Amended Complaint.

The defendants’ response to the plaintiffs’ class action motion indicates only two issues of contention: (1) The alleged class action does not pass muster because individual issues predominate and a class action is unmanageable; and (2) Alternatively, several of the groups attempting to represent the class are improper class representatives.

This court is of the opinion, and the defendants apparently agree, that the plaintiff class fulfills the numerosity requirement of Rule 23(a)(1)1 and that a class action is appropriate under Rule 23(a)(2)2 in that there are questions of law or fact common to the class, e. g., whether or not the defendants engaged in a course of conduct which artificially inflated the price of CNA securities with resulting harm to the class purchasers of such securities. The defendants apparently feel, and this court agrees, that the Rule 23(a)(3)3 typicality requirement is met. The defendants have focused their objections on the Rule 23(a)(4)4 prerequisite of adequate representation and on the Rule 23(b)(3)5 requirement that common issues must predominate over issues affecting only individual members of the class. The defendants argue that this class action is unmanageable and assumedly maintain that a class action is an inferior method of adjudicating this suit.

It is well known that before a class action may be maintained all four of the Rule 23(a) requirements must be satisfied and, in addition, one of the Rule 23(b) prerequisites must be met. In their First Consolidated and Amended Complaint the plaintiffs stated that their action is brought under Rules 23(a), 23(b)(1)(B), and 23(b)(3) of the Federal [684]*684Rules of Civil Procedure. Paragraph 6, First Consolidated and Amended Complaint. However, the plaintiffs’ motion for a class action determination is devoid of any reference to Rule 23(b)(1)(B), and for that reason this court finds it unnecessary to consider that portion of Rule 23. Instead, this court’s discussion will revolve around the disputed elements of (a) and (b)(3) of Rule 23.

The Issues of Predomination and Manageability

The genesis of the defendants’ contention that individual issues predominate in the case before this court is the recent United States Supreme Court decision in Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723, 95 S.Ct. 1917, 44 L.Ed.2d 539 (1975). The defendants cite Blue Chip as authority for their argument that Rule 10b-5 (17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5) cannot be expanded so as to ignore the requirements set out in the express liability sections of the securities laws. This reasoning misleads the defendants to the conclusion that Section 9 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 governs liability for the market manipulation alleged by the plaintiffs in the instant case and Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 controls all cases, such as the one before this court, where alleged misrepresentations are contained in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Therefore, defendants continue, the plaintiffs must prove all the elements of a cause of action contained in those provisions, and thus individual, issues allegedly predominate over the common issues.

Although the defendants acknowledge that the precise holding in Blue Chip

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Bluebook (online)
69 F.R.D. 681, 22 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 871, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/seiden-v-nicholson-ilnd-1976.