Ward v. Succession of Freeman

735 F. Supp. 692, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5294, 1990 WL 57063
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Louisiana
DecidedMay 4, 1990
DocketCiv. A. No. 85-1254 “I” (4)
StatusPublished

This text of 735 F. Supp. 692 (Ward v. Succession of Freeman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ward v. Succession of Freeman, 735 F. Supp. 692, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5294, 1990 WL 57063 (E.D. La. 1990).

Opinion

ORDER AND REASONS

MENTZ, District Judge.

Before the Court is the motion of the defendants for summary judgment based on prescription. The Court, having reviewed the motion, the memoranda of counsel, the record, facts, and applicable law, hereby denies the motion for the reasons set forth more fully below.

The Facts and Procedural History

In an invitation dated April 20, 1982, defendant Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Co., Ltd. (LA Coke) presented a tender offer to its shareholders to purchase their common stock at a price of $850 per share. LA Coke claimed in the tender offer to have based this price per share on the $950 purchase price that LA Coke had recently negotiated with some of its larger minority shareholders. The tender offer price was discounted $100 due to the nature of the two offers.

Upon receiving the tender offer, the plaintiffs, each a minority shareholder in LA Coke, individually considered whether or not to tender their shares. Some of the plaintiffs went so far as to contact the defendant directors and officers of LA Coke to inquire further regarding the offer. Those who did so were allegedly told by the defendants and their agents that the tendering price was “fair” and “good.” Based in part on these reassurances, as well as fears that LA Coke would again suspend paying dividends and/or “squeeze out” minority shareholders through a reverse stock split, the plaintiffs each agreed to tender their shares pursuant to the 1982 tender.

Primarily through this and other tenders in 1980 and 1983, defendants Richard Freeman, Sr., Richard Freeman, Jr., and Louis Freeman increased their holdings in LA Coke from less than 20% of the outstanding common shares in 1979 to over 86% in late 1983. In November of 1984, the defendants reached an agreement with the Coca-Cola Co. (US Coke) whereby US Coke agreed to buy LA Coke at a price of $6,750 a share. This resulted in the Freemans [694]*694receiving over $120,000,000 for their shares.

In January 1985, Mary Freeman Wisdom and other relatives of the Freemans who had tendered their LA Coke stock in 1983 brought a suit against the Freemans involving nearly identical allegations to those made at present. The plaintiffs claim that the publicity which followed the filing of that suit, specifically articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, was the first indication to them of any fraudulent acts by the defendants.

The plaintiffs filed this action on March 21, 1985. In their complaint, the plaintiffs sought recovery for RICO violations, negligent misrepresentation, securities fraud, state law fraud, controlling person, breach of fiduciary duty, and aiding and abetting.

The case was assigned to the Hon. Martin L.C. Feldman, District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, who presided over a jury trial in the matter. At the first trial, Judge Feldman directed a verdict against the defendants on their affirmative defense of prescription. The jury then rendered a verdict for the defendants on the RICO, negligent misrepresentation, and aiding and abetting counts, and for the plaintiffs on the securities fraud, state law fraud, controlling person, and breach of fiduciary duty counts. The defendants appealed the judgments entered against them. The plaintiffs did not do likewise on the RICO, negligent misrepresentation, and aiding and abetting claims.

The Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded the trial court’s ruling directing a verdict against the defendants on the issue of prescription. Ward v. Succession of Freeman, 854 F.2d 780, 794 (5th Cir.1988), reh’g denied, 863 F.2d 882 (5th Cir.1988), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 109 S.Ct. 2064, 104 L.Ed.2d 629 (1989). In so doing, the Circuit Court stated that there was, “considerable record evidence raising serious questions about the knowledge the plaintiffs had in 1982 about specific ‘material omissions’.” Id. The Court of Appeals further directed the district court on remand to “consider carefully the evidence presented by the defendants regarding the time at which the plaintiffs had inquiry notice of each fraudulent act.” Id. at 795. The defendants now seek summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ actions for federal securities fraud and state law fraud through a reassertion of their prescription defense.

Prescription

There is a two year prescriptive period on federal securities law claims and one year on state law fraud claims. Davis v. A.G. Edwards and Sons, Inc., 823 F.2d 105, 107 (5th Cir.1987) (the prescriptive period governing Securities Act claims is governed by Louisiana’s two year prescriptive period). Although state law governs the proper limitation period, when that period commences is governed by federal law. Id.

The federal securities law actions in this suit accrued and the prescriptive period began to run when the plaintiffs either had actual knowledge of the violation or notice of facts which, in the exercise of due diligence, would have led to actual knowledge thereof. Vigman v. Community National Bank & Trust Co., 635 F.2d 455, 459 (5th Cir.1981) (citations omitted). The defendants claim that the plaintiffs had actual knowledge or at least inquiry notice of the facts which form the basis of their claim. They assert that the plaintiffs have admitted as much in their depositions and other statements. Specifically, the defendants point to the fact that at the time of the tender various plaintiffs: 1) had suspicions that the 1982 tender was part of a scheme by defendants to “squeeze out” minority shareholders in LA Coke and that such a scheme might later involve reverse stock splits detrimental to the plaintiffs’ interest in LA Coke; 2) knew that US Coke was purchasing various regional bottling companies as part of an overall bottler restructuring program; and 3) knew that the tender would result in the defendants increasing their proportional shareholdings in LA Coke.

The plaintiffs argue that such knowledge does not, however, put them on inquiry notice of acts amounting to state law fraud or violations of federal securities [695]*695laws. All the facts the plaintiffs knew about at the time of the 1982 tender offer and all of the maneuvers the plaintiffs suspected that the defendants might employ to squeeze them out were legal and, therefore, nonactionable. The plaintiffs claim that until they were alerted to the allegations within Mary Freeman Wisdom’s suit in January of 1985, they had no reason to make investigations or inquiries into possible fraud on behalf of the defendants and their representations or omissions surrounding the 1982 tender offer.

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Related

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.
477 U.S. 242 (Supreme Court, 1986)
Davis v. A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
823 F.2d 105 (Fifth Circuit, 1987)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
735 F. Supp. 692, 1990 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5294, 1990 WL 57063, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ward-v-succession-of-freeman-laed-1990.