The case involved a dispute over the selection of an arbitration forum under customer agreements between plaintiffs and defendant brokers Shearson/American Express. After the Supreme Court and Second Circuit affirmed an order compelling arbitration of all claims including RICO, plaintiffs sought to stay arbitration before the NYSE (selected by defendants after plaintiffs missed the contractual five-day election deadline) and instead compel arbitration before the AAA under AMEX rules, first in federal court and then by application in New York state court. The district court treated the motion as one for summary judgment and granted a permanent injunction barring further state court proceedings on the forum selection issue. The court reasoned that defendants had validly elected NYSE pursuant to the agreement's terms, plaintiffs had waived their election right by failing to respond timely and not seeking a stay, and the federal judgment already required arbitration without need for further orders; an injunction was necessary under 28 U.S.C. § 2283 to protect and effectuate that judgment.
In this case, Population Planning Associates, Inc. (PPA), a North Carolina corporation, sued Life Essentials, Inc., a California corporation, and its president for misappropriating PPA's mailing list to solicit sales of a product called Revive Plus, asserting claims under the Lanham Act, RICO, and state law for unfair competition, false advertising, and related torts. The defendants moved to dismiss for improper venue in the Southern District of New York or to transfer the case to the Central District of California. The court held that venue was improper under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because the claims did not arise in New York, as defendants conducted no significant business there, all witnesses and records were located in California, and litigating in New York would be unduly burdensome to the defendants. The court therefore transferred the action to the Central District of California under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a).
This case involves claims by plaintiffs Spear, Leeds & Kellogg and Elliot Associates against Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) and its officers and directors for securities fraud under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, specifically alleging false representations about the convertibility of warrants and debentures into common stock, along with related state law claims. The court denied the defendants' motions to dismiss the complaint for failure to plead fraud with particularity under Rule 9(b), for summary judgment, to dismiss the Section 20(a) control person liability claim, to stay discovery, and to quash service of process. The reasoning was that the plaintiffs sufficiently alleged specific motives and benefits to establish scienter, that material factual disputes precluded summary judgment, that the primary fraud claim's sufficiency supported the control person claim, and that any delay in service caused no prejudice and was due to excusable neglect.
This case involved defendant Weichert, who was convicted after a jury trial of conspiracy to defraud the United States and multiple counts of bankruptcy fraud arising from the illegal transfer and diversion of assets from a bankrupt wood stove manufacturing company and related entities. Following an appeals court remand, the district court held an evidentiary hearing to determine the actual damages or loss caused by the bankruptcy fraud convictions for purposes of restitution under 18 U.S.C. § 3651. After considering testimony from witnesses including company officers and the defendant's partner, along with documentary evidence of diverted goods and misappropriated checks, the court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the total loss amounted to $155,956.64. The court therefore ordered an amended judgment reducing the previously imposed restitution from $200,000 to this lower amount.
This case involved a professional corporation suing brokerage firm Shearson Lehman Brothers and an employee under federal and state securities laws for losses from an allegedly unauthorized transfer of holdings to a margin account. The defendants moved to stay the action and compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act, arguing that an arbitration clause in a customer agreement signed by the corporation's president for his personal account also bound the corporate account, or alternatively that continued trading after receipt of an agreement for the corporate account created an obligation to arbitrate. The court denied the motion in full, holding that no customer agreement was executed on behalf of the corporation and that the personal agreement did not bind the separate corporate entity. The court further reasoned that there was insufficient evidence the corporation received any agreement, and that unsigned arbitration agreements are not enforceable against non-signatories absent specific circumstances like explicit contract language or a longstanding course of conduct, none of which applied here.
In Burmah Oil Tankers, Ltd. v. Trisun Tankers, Ltd., the charterer petitioned to permanently stay a second arbitration demanded by the tanker owner under a 1984 Asbatankvoy charter party, following a prior arbitration that had awarded damages for cargo conversion and resolved withheld freight. The owner sought to arbitrate a separate claim for unpaid demurrage of $47,515.58 that had arisen during the same voyage but was not presented in the first proceeding. The court stayed the arbitration, ruling that the demurrage claim was part of the same cause of action under the transactional test for res judicata and thus barred because a confirmed arbitration award carries the force of a federal judgment that courts may protect from relitigation through later arbitration.