Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corp.

149 F. Supp. 390, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3869
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedMarch 12, 1957
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 149 F. Supp. 390 (Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corp., 149 F. Supp. 390, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3869 (S.D.N.Y. 1957).

Opinion

DIMOCK, District Judge.

This action under section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S. [391]*391C. § 78p(b), which gives a right of recovery of “short swing” profits made by insiders, was tried before me. After trial I filed an opinion, D.C., 132 F.Supp. 100, in which I held that plaintiff had made prima facie proof that defendant Graham-Paige Motors Corporation had made a profit of $434,787.86 on a short swing purchase and sale of stock of defendant Kaiser-Frazer Corporation. I further held, however, that plaintiff had not only the burden of making prima facie proof of profit by Graham-Paige but also the burden of establishing the fact of profit by a preponderance of the evidence. This burden of establishing profit by a preponderance of the evidence I held plaintiff had not sustained and I consequently denied recovery.

The Court of Appeals held on appeal, however, 2 Cir., 232 F.2d 299, 302, that I was wrong in holding that plaintiff, after establishing a prima facie case, continued to bear the burden of proof. The true rule, as I am instructed by the Court of Appeals, is that a “beneficial owner” who buys and sells within the statutory period is to be regarded as a fiduciary who violates his duty of loyalty and who must therefore account for his profits and that “once a cestui shows a breach of such a duty and prima facie proof of a maximum amount of profits made by the fiduciary, then the fiduciary has the burden of proving to what extent the profits were less than this maximum — especially where the fiduciary’s breach is responsible for the difficulty or impossibility of proving the amount with certainty — and that consequently, if the fiduciary’s proof leaves the amount uncertain, judgment goes against him for the maximum figure.”

The case was therefore remanded to me with directions that I make a specific finding on the issue as to whether Graham-Paige discharged this burden of showing that and to what extent the profits realized were less than the maximum of $434,787.86 indicated by plaintiff’s prima facie proof.

The parties have briefed this question and submitted it to me on the original record. I find that defendant Graham-Paige has discharged the burden of showing that no profits were realized.

The making of this finding requires a much more exhaustive consideration of the evidence than was necessary when I merely examined the question whether plaintiff had sustained the burden of proof that profit was made. Then it was unnecessary for me to determine whether or not Graham-Paige actually profited from the two transactions and I refused to make any finding on that question. Now I must examine the evidence in an attempt to do so.

I begin, as I did before, with the highly significant circumstances that when defendant “purchased” the Kaiser-Frazer stock it was selling on the market at 9%, that when defendant sold it it was selling at> 7%, and that defendant actually realized 6%. I hold that those circumstances constitute evidence that no profit was made. The directors of Kaiser-Frazer were under a duty to obtain full value for any stock which it sold. Those in control of Kaiser-Frazer were intimately familiar with the value of the Graham-Paige exchanged assets. There is thus a fair inference against Kaiser-Frazer that Graham-Paige paid for the stock what it would have cost in the market. True, such a large block would change hands either above or below the market if either the buyer or the seller was under greater compulsion than the other. If both were equally desirous of putting the deal through, however, there is no reason to suppose that the sale would take place at other than the market price. Here I find that the parties were equally anxious to make the trade of stock and non-stock package items for the Graham-Paige exchanged assets hereinafter more fully described. Hence I infer and find that Graham-Paige paid at least 9% for the stock. .Since it sold at 6% it lost at least 2% a share or a total of $445,625 on the 155,000 shares.

The same result is derived from the market prices by another method. As will hereinafter more fully appear, the Graham-Paige exchanged'assets consist[392]*392ed of tangible and intangible items. If the cost of the stock is to be ascertained by appraisal of the exchanged assets and the non-stock package items, therefore, the trier of the facts is faced with the task of valuing intangible items like good will, an automobile design, production facilities and availability of distribution outlets.

Where there is no ready means of converting into dollars and cents “imponderables” that have been traded for securities later sold in a short swing transaction, the court will treat the transaction as though the imponderables had been sold for a sufficient amount of cash to buy the securities on the market and the money had been used for that purpose. That was Judge Rifkind’s holding in Truncale v. Blumberg, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 88 F.Supp. 677, affirmed on opinion below, Truncale v. Scully, 2 Cir., 182 F.2d 1021. There persons surrendered their employment and bound themselves contractually to work for a corporation whose prospects at that time were far from promising. As part of the deal they received warrants. It would have been theoretically possible to determine what salary would have had to be paid to obtain the services of the employees if the warrants had not been turned over and then to find the cost of the warrants by computing the excess of the hypothetical salary over the salary actually paid. Equating the cost to the market value was so much simpler and more accurate, however, that the court treated the transaction as though the corporation had paid the employees an amount of cash equal to the market price of the warrants and the employees had bought the warrants. Here 1 am admonished by the Court of Appeals that, though there was no market for the exchanged tangible and intangible assets, I must look to other relevant evidence of the price which a buyer would pay. That is difficult. One of defendant’s experts stated that many of the intangibles were of “imponderable” value and that as to many he could not place a dollar amount on them and would not know where to find anyone who could. Finding the price that a buyer would pay here is certainly more difficult than finding the salary which would have had to be paid in the Truncale case if the warrants had not been turned over to the prospective employees. Thus I feel that I am justified, as an alternative method of determining the cost of the stock, in treating the transaction as if Graham-Paige had paid to Kaiser-Frazer sufficient cash to buy the stock at the market price. Here again, therefore, I infer and find that Graham-Paige paid at least 9% for the stock and that the resale resulted in a loss of at least $445,625.

The ultimate question is not the value of the Kaiser-Frazer stock at the time that it was purchased but the then cost of that stock. Thus far, I have considered two legal theories each of which pointed to the fact that the cost of the stock was the same as its market value and thus to the fact that it was sold at a loss instead of at a profit. I feel that I must check this against the actual value of the property transferred by Graham-Paige as the price of the Kaiser-Frazer stock. Indeed I am directed by the Court of Appeals to make such a valuation.

The cost of the stock to Graham-Paige is not necessarily the sanie as its market value. Various factors may result in a purchase at more or less than the market value.

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Related

Slaughter v. Philadelphia National Bank
290 F. Supp. 234 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1968)
Adler v. Klawans
267 F.2d 840 (Second Circuit, 1959)
Michael Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corporation
259 F.2d 476 (Second Circuit, 1958)
Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corp.
259 F.2d 476 (Second Circuit, 1958)

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149 F. Supp. 390, 1957 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3869, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stella-v-graham-paige-motors-corp-nysd-1957.