Gelboim v. Credit Suisse Group AG et al

Filing 43

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER granting in part and denying in part 25 Motion to Dismiss; terminating pursuant to instructions from Chambers; 32 Motion to Dismiss. For the reasons stated above, defendants motions to dismiss are granted in part and denied i n part. First, defendants motion to dismiss plaintiffs federal antitrust claim is granted. Regardless of whether defendants conduct constituted a violation of the antitrust law "antitrust injury." An antitrust injury is an injury that resul ts from an anticompetitive aspect of defendants conduct. Here, although plaintiffs have alleged that defendants conspired to suppress LIBOR over a nearly three-year-long period and that they were injured as a result, they have not alleged that their injury resulted from any harm to competition. The process by which banks submit LIBOR quotes to the BBA is not itself competitive, and plaintiffs have not alleged that defendants conduct had an anticompetitive effect in any market in which defendants compete. Because plaintiffs have not alleged an antitrustinjury, their federal antitrust claim is dismissed. Second, defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiffs' commodities manipulation claims is granted in part and denied in part. Contrary to defendants' arguments, plaintiffs' claims do not involve an impermissible extraterritorial application of the CEA, and plaintiffs have adequately pleaded their claims. However, certain of plaintiffs' claims are time-barred because n umerous articles published in April and May 2008 in prominent national publications placed plaintiffs on notice of their injury. Therefore, plaintiffs commodities manipulation claims based on contracts entered into between August 2007 and May 29, 200 8, are time-barred. However, plaintiffs claims based on contracts entered into between April 15, 2009, and May 2010 are not time-barred, and plaintiffs' claims based on contracts entered into between May 30, 2008, and April 14, 2009, may or may not be barred, though we will not dismiss them at this stage. Additionally, because the Barclays settlements broughtto light information that plaintiffs might not previously have been able to learn, we grant plaintiffs leave to move to amend their co mplaint to include allegations based on such information, provided that any such motion addresses the concerns raised herein and is accompanied by a proposed second amended complaint. Third, defendants' motion to dismiss plaintiffs' RICO cl aim is granted. For one, the PSLRA bars plaintiffs from bringing a RICO claim based on predicate acts that could have been the subject of a securities fraud action. Here, the predicate acts of mail and wire fraud underlying plaintiffs' RICO clai m could have been the subject of a claim for securities fraud. Additionally, RICO applies only domestically, meaning that the alleged enterprise must be a domestic enterprise. However, the enterprise alleged by plaintiffs is based in England. For the se reasons, plaintiffs RICO claim is dismissed. Finally, plaintiffs' state-law claims are all dismissed, some with prejudice and some without. Plaintiffs' Cartwright Act claim is dismissed with prejudice for lack of antitrust injury. The ex change-based plaintiffs' New York common law unjust enrichment claim is also dismissed with prejudice, as plaintiffs have not alleged any relationship between them and defendants. With regard to the remaining state-law claims, we decline to exer cise supplemental jurisdiction and We recognize that it might be unexpected that we are dismissing a substantial portion of plaintiffs claims, given that several of the defendants here have already paid penalties to government regulatory agencies rea ching into the billions of dollars. However, these results are not as incongruous as they might seem. Under the statutes invoked here, there are many requirements that private plaintiffs must satisfy, but which government agencies need not. The reaso n for these differing requirements is that the focuses of public enforcement and private enforcement, even of the same statutes, are not identical. The broad public interests behind the statutes invoked here, such as integrity of the markets and comp etition, are being addressed by ongoing governmental enforcement. While public enforcement is often supplemented by suits brought by private parties acting as "private attorneys general," those private actions which seek damages and attorne ys fees must be examined closely to ensure that the plaintiffs who are suing are the ones properly entitled to recover and that the suit is, in fact, serving the public purposes of the laws being invoked. Therefore, although we are fully cognizant of the settlements that several of the defendants here have entered into with government regulators, we find that only some of the claims that plaintiffs have asserted may properly proceed. (Signed by Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger on 3/29/2013) (tro)

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