St. Clair v. Citizens Financial Group

340 F. App'x 62
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJuly 23, 2009
DocketNo. 08-4870
StatusPublished

This text of 340 F. App'x 62 (St. Clair v. Citizens Financial Group) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
St. Clair v. Citizens Financial Group, 340 F. App'x 62 (3d Cir. 2009).

Opinion

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

Donald St. Clair, proceeding pro se, appeals the order .of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss his complaint without granting him leave to amend his complaint a second time. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm.

I.

As we write solely for the benefit of the parties, we set forth briefly only those facts necessary to our analysis. Donald St. Clair and his now deceased mother opened a Citizens Bank checking account in Connecticut, had Social Security checks automatically deposited into the account from the time it was opened until January 2007, and kept the account in use even after he moved to New Jersey at an unspecified date.

In March 2008, St. Clair sued Citizens Financial Group, its parent corporation, [64]*64RBS Citizens, N.A., several of its banks, and numerous officers and executive committee members of those entities (collectively, “Defendants”) in the District Court for the District of New Jersey after incurring fees for overdrawing his Citizens Bank checking account.

According to St. Clair, his account was a mere $2.87 overdrawn, yet he incurred $441 in penalties under Citizens Bank’s overdraft policy before he was even notified of the deficiency.1 In addition to claiming that the bank deceptively hides its fees from its customers, St. Clair alleged that it was fraudulent for the bank to have waited approximately four to six days to mail his overdraft notices, given that the overdraft fee grows each day the account remains overdrawn.

After the Defendants filed a motion to dismiss, St. Clair responded with a 57-page amended complaint on July 7, 2008. There, he alleged that the overdraft fees had been falsely inflated because of the Defendants’ monopolization of the market or, alternatively, as a result of a conspiracy between Defendants and various “unknown person conspirators of competitor banks and/or bank enterprises.”

St. Clair asserts two general claims and multiple subclaims against the Defendants stemming from the overdraft policies: (1) the Defendants illegally conspired to fix the fees in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2 and the New Jersey Antitrust Act, § 56:9-3; and (2) the Defendants used mail fraud, bank fraud, and extortion to force him to pay the overdraft fees in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-63.

In support of the conspiracy claims, St. Clair provides the overdraft fee structures of several competing banks which appear to be similar to Citizens Bank’s fee structure and further notes that several of the individual Defendants, Citizens Bank officers, have prior work experience at other banks with similar overdraft fee structures, thereby giving them opportunity to enter into a conspiracy.

Upon Defendants’ second motion to dismiss, the District Court concluded that St. Clair failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and dismissed the complaint without giving St. Clair leave to amend a second time. This appeal followed.

II.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and conduct de novo review of the District Court’s dismissal pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). Phillips v. County of Allegheny, 515 F.3d 224, 230 (3d Cir.2008). We accept as true all of the allegations contained in the complaint and draw reasonable inferences in favor of a pro se plaintiff. Id. at 231; see also Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 127 S.Ct. 2197, 2200, 167 L.Ed.2d 1081 (2007) (per curiam). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ ” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, - U.S. -, -, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, [65]*65550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007)).

III.

St. Clair advances four antitrust claims. First, he claims that the Defendants violated Section One of the Sherman Antitrust Act by colluding with other banks to illegally set overdraft fees beyond fair market rates. Next, he alleges that the artificially inflated overdraft fees are only possible because Defendants monopolize the banking market in violation of Section Two of the Sherman Antitrust Act. His final two antitrust claims are matching state law claims pursuant to the New Jersey Antitrust Act, N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 56:9-3, -4.2

To state a claim under either Section 1 of the Sherman Act or the New Jersey Antitrust Act § 56:9-3, a complainant must allege that two or more entities formed a combination or conspiracy. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 548, 127 S.Ct. 1955; Patel, 848 A.2d at 827. In Twombly, the Supreme Court held that general allegations of conspiracy are not sufficient. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955. The complaint must provide “enough fact to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of illegal agreement.” Id. at 556, 127 S.Ct. 1955. “[A]n allegation of parallel conduct and a bare assertion of conspiracy will not suffice.” Id. Furthermore, “[w]ithout more, parallel conduct does not suggest conspiracy, and a conclusory allegation of agreement at some unidentified point does not supply facts adequate to show illegality.” Id. at 556-57,127 S.Ct. 1955.

As in Twombly, St. Clair’s conspiracy claims fail because he too has alleged only parallel conduct and gross speculation. His conspiracy claims rely on the parallel fee structures of several competing banks and the assertion that the individual defendants, officers of Citizens Bank, each had prior work experience at other banks. These accusations are wholly inadequate.

St. Clan- also alleges that the Defendants and the co-conspiring banks monopolize the market as an oligopoly, illegally control 100 percent of the market share, and use this advantage to set overdraft fees artificially high. As the District Court correctly noted, to state a claim of monopolization in contravention of Section 2 of the Sherman Act and its analog, the New Jersey Antitrust Act § 56:9-4, a plaintiff must allege: [66]*66Crossroads Cogeneration Corp. v. Orange & Rockland Utils., Inc., 159 F.3d 129, 141 (3d Cir.1998) (quotations omitted); see also Patel, 848 A.2d at 829-30. The Supreme Court has defined monopoly power as the power to “control prices or exclude competition.” United States v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 351 U.S. 377, 392, 76 S.Ct. 994, 100 L.Ed. 1264 (1956).

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

Related

Swift & Co. v. United States
196 U.S. 375 (Supreme Court, 1905)
United States v. E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co.
351 U.S. 377 (Supreme Court, 1956)
Rotella v. Wood
528 U.S. 549 (Supreme Court, 2000)
Erickson v. Pardus
551 U.S. 89 (Supreme Court, 2007)
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly
550 U.S. 544 (Supreme Court, 2007)
Ashcroft v. Iqbal
556 U.S. 662 (Supreme Court, 2009)
United States v. Frank Mazzei
521 F.2d 639 (Third Circuit, 1975)
Barr Laboratories, Inc. v. Abbott Laboratories
978 F.2d 98 (Third Circuit, 1992)
Dominick Annulli v. Ananda K. Panikkar
200 F.3d 189 (Third Circuit, 1999)
United States v. Angela Khorozian
333 F.3d 498 (Third Circuit, 2003)
Phillips v. County of Allegheny
515 F.3d 224 (Third Circuit, 2008)
Patel v. Soriano
848 A.2d 803 (New Jersey Superior Court App Division, 2004)
Warden v. McLelland
288 F.3d 105 (Third Circuit, 2002)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
340 F. App'x 62, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/st-clair-v-citizens-financial-group-ca3-2009.