Rubenstein v. Adamany ( 2021 )


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  • 21-905-cv
    Rubenstein v. Adamany
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
    SUMMARY ORDER
    Rulings by summary order do not have precedential effect. Citation to a summary order filed
    on or after January 1, 2007, is permitted and is governed by Federal Rule of Appellate
    Procedure 32.1 and this Court’s Local Rule 32.1.1. When citing a summary order in a
    document filed with this Court, a party must cite either the Federal Appendix or an
    electronic database (with the notation “summary order”). A party citing a summary order
    must serve a copy of it on any party not represented by counsel.
    At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at
    the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York,
    on the 7th day of December, two thousand twenty-one.
    PRESENT:          PIERRE N. LEVAL,
    JOSÉ A. CABRANES,
    DENNY CHIN,
    Circuit Judges.
    STANLEY RUBENSTEIN, Derivatively on Behalf of
    Nominal Defendant JEFFERIES FINANCIAL
    GROUP INC.,
    Plaintiff-Appellant,                   21-905-cv
    v.
    LINDA L. ADAMANY, BARRY J. ALPERIN, ROBERT D.
    BEYER, FRANCISCO L. BORGES, W. PATRICK
    CAMPBELL, PAUL M. DOUGAN, BRIAN P. FREIDMAN,
    MARYANNE GIMARTIN, RICHARD B. HANDLER,
    ALAN J. HIRSCHFIELD, JAMES E. JORDAN, ROBERT E.
    JOYAL, JACOB M. KATZ, JEFFREY C. KEIL, MICHAEL
    T. O’KANE, JESSEE CLYDE NICHOLS, III, STUART H.
    REESE, MICHAEL SORKIN, and JOSEPH S. STEINBERG,
    Defendants-Appellees,
    JEFFERIES FINANCIAL GROUP INC.,
    1
    Nominal Defendant-Appellee. *
    FOR PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT:                                    HUNG G. TA (JooYun Kim, Natalia D.
    Williams, on the brief), HGT Law, New
    York, NY, (Peter Safirstein, Elizabeth
    Metcalf, Safirstein Metcalf LLP, New
    York, NY, on the brief).
    FOR DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES:                                   GEORGE S. WANG, Simpson Thacher &
    Bartlett LLP, New York, NY.
    Appeal from an order and judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern
    District of New York (Paul A. Crotty, Judge).
    UPON DUE CONSIDERATION WHEREOF, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED,
    ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the order and judgment of the District Court be and hereby
    are AFFIRMED with respect to Rubenstein’s claims under New York state law and VACATED
    with respect to Rubenstein’s claim under section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the
    “1934 Act”), and the cause is REMANDED to the District Court for further proceedings on
    Rubenstein’s claim under section 14(a) of the 1934 Act.
    Stanley Rubenstein brings this shareholder derivative suit, nominally on behalf of Jefferies
    Financial Group Inc. (“Jefferies”), against officers and directors of Jefferies. Rubenstein alleges that
    Jefferies’s executive officers—Brian P. Friedman, Richard B. Handler, and Joseph S. Steinberg—
    extensively misused Jefferies’s three aircraft for personal travel, and misclassified personal flights as
    business flights. Among the alleged abuses are a director-executive flying friends and family from
    Morristown to Tampa to attend a football game, then from Tampa to New Orleans before returning
    to Morristown. It is also alleged that one defendant flew twenty-five personal guests on two
    aircrafts, without any company employees on board. Rubenstein further alleges that Jefferies’s
    board members (including Friedman, Handler, and Steinberg; together, “Defendants”) failed to
    prevent this misuse and approved proxy statements that concealed it. In addition to the raw
    expense, the misuse allegedly cost Jefferies millions of dollars in disallowed tax deductions and
    exposed it to potential claims by regulators.
    On March 6, 2018, Rubenstein demanded that Jefferies’s board investigate this alleged
    misuse. The Board of Directors formed a special committee to investigate, assisted by outside
    counsel. The special committee recommended several changes, but it concluded that Jefferies
    should not pursue legal claims against Friedman, Handler, or Steinberg. Jefferies’s board accepted
    *
    The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the caption as set forth above.
    2
    the special committee’s recommendations. Rubenstein alleges that the special committee wrongly
    refused to sue because, among other things, it failed to inform itself about (1) unaccompanied non-
    employees using Jefferies’s aircraft, and (2) the extent of incorrectly documented personal use.
    Rubenstein alleges New York state law claims, as well as a claim under section 14(a) of the
    1934 Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78n, and Rule 14a-9, 17 C.F.R. § 240.14a-9. The District Court dismissed the
    complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for failure to state a claim
    upon which relief can be granted. It concluded that the board’s decision not to sue on a state law
    theory was a valid business judgment under New York law, and that Rubenstein had not pleaded a
    section 14(a) claim because he failed to make sufficient allegations of loss causation. We assume the
    parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on
    appeal.
    We review de novo a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim on
    which relief can be granted, “accepting all factual allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all
    reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.” Caro v. Weintraub, 
    618 F.3d 94
    , 97 (2d Cir. 2010).
    The same is true for a district court’s decision to dismiss a derivative action. Espinoza ex rel.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co. v. Dimon, 
    797 F.3d 229
    , 231, 236 (2d Cir. 2015), certified question answered, 
    124 A.3d 33
     (Del. 2015). “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, 
    556 U.S. 662
    , 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 
    550 U.S. 544
    , 570 (2007)).
    I.
    New York’s business judgment rule “bars judicial inquiry into actions of corporate directors
    taken in good faith and in the exercise of honest judgment in the lawful and legitimate furtherance
    of corporate purposes.” Auerbach v. Bennett, 
    393 N.E.2d 994
    , 1000 (N.Y. 1979). Because
    “[d]erivative claims against corporate directors belong to the corporation itself[,] . . . the decision
    whether and to what extent to explore and prosecute such claims lies within the judgment and
    control of the corporation’s board of directors.” 
    Id.
     Notwithstanding these limits, “the court may
    inquire as to the disinterested independence of the members of th[e] [special] committee and as to
    the appropriateness and sufficiency of the investigative procedures chosen and pursued.” 
    Id. at 996
    .
    As Rubenstein does not allege a lack of disinterested independence, we inquire only as to the
    sufficiency of the special committee’s investigative procedures. We defer to the board’s decision not
    to sue unless the shareholder alleges “that the investigation has been so restricted in scope, so
    shallow in execution, or otherwise so [p]ro forma or halfhearted as to constitute a pretext or sham.”
    
    Id. at 1003
    .
    Rubenstein’s complaint does not cross this high bar. He relies on distinguishable cases
    where the plaintiffs alleged more indicia of an incomplete process. Rubenstein’s complaint, for
    3
    example, does not allege that the special committee failed to interview necessary witnesses. 1 It does
    not identify a government investigation resulting in a contrary outcome. 2 Nor does it claim that the
    special committee failed to assist its retained counsel in investigating. 3 Without more, Rubenstein’s
    principal claims—that the special committee failed to uncover incorrectly designated flights and
    flights with private guests unaccompanied by a Jefferies employee—do not plausibly suggest that the
    investigation was “a pretext or sham.” Auerbach, 393 N.E.2d at 1003. Thus, we affirm dismissal of
    Rubenstein’s state law claims.
    II.
    “Section 14(a) of the [1934] Act provides that ‘it shall be unlawful for any person in
    contravention of such rules and regulations as the SEC may prescribe to solicit any proxy or consent
    or authorization in respect of any security registered pursuant to this title.’” Koppel v. 4987 Corp., 
    167 F.3d 125
    , 131 (2d Cir. 1999) (alterations omitted) (quoting 15 U.S.C. § 78n(a)). Rule 14a-9,
    promulgated under section 14(a), states that:
    No solicitation subject to this regulation shall be made by means of any proxy
    statement . . . containing any statement which, at the time and in the light of the
    circumstances under which it is made, is false or misleading with respect to any
    material fact, or which omits to state any material fact necessary in order to make the
    statements therein not false or misleading . . . .
    17 C.F.R. § 240.14a-9(a). Rubenstein alleges that Jefferies’s board—all of whose members are
    named as defendants—solicited investors to elect directors and approve executive compensation
    based on proxy statements that understated the cost of executive compensation by omitting the
    extent of the personal use of Jefferies’s aircraft and the resulting lost tax deductions.
    1
    Cf. City of Orlando Police Pension Fund v. Page, 
    970 F. Supp. 2d 1022
    , 1032 (N.D. Cal. 2013)
    (noting that the “plaintiff has identified witnesses who should have been interviewed but were not”);
    Brosz v. Fishman, No. 13-CV-753, 
    2016 WL 7494883
    , at *5–6 (S.D. Ohio Dec. 29, 2016) (noting a
    “failure to interview anyone outside the [c]ompany”); Barovic v. Ballmer, 
    72 F. Supp. 3d 1210
    , 1216
    (W.D. Wash. 2014) (noting a failure to “interview a single individual who would have been likely to
    corroborate [the] [p]laintiffs’ claims”).
    Cf. Page, 970 F. Supp. 2d at 1031 (noting a special committee’s finding of no wrongdoing,
    2
    which contradicted a non-prosecution agreement accepting responsibility).
    Cf. Davidowitz v. Edelman, 
    583 N.Y.S.2d 340
    , 344 (Sup. Ct. Kings Cnty. 1992) (noting that the
    3
    committee did not “join in their counsel’s investigation or review, save in the most perfunctory
    manner”), aff’d, 
    612 N.Y.S.2d 882
     (2d Dep’t 1994).
    4
    We reject Defendants’ argument that this is a dressed up fiduciary duty claim. It is true that
    a plaintiff fails to state a claim under section 14(a) when it alleges that a proxy statement was
    misleading because it did not disclose that a company’s officers and directors had breached their
    fiduciary duty. See Koppel, 
    167 F.3d at 133
    –34 (2d Cir 1999); Field v. Trump, 
    850 F.2d. 938
    , 946-48 (2d
    Cir 1988). We have reasoned that such claims amount to an “attempt to use [section] 14(a) and Rule
    14a-9 as an avenue for access to the federal courts in order to redress alleged mismanagement or
    breach of fiduciary duty on the part of corporate executives,” Maldonado v. Flynn, 
    597 F.2d 789
    , 796
    (2d Cir. 1979), and that such claims are improper because “no general cause of action lies under
    [section] 14(a) to remedy a simple breach of fiduciary duty,” Koppel, 
    167 F.3d at 133
    . However, this
    rule is inapplicable here, as Rubenstein does not allege that Jefferies’s proxy statements were
    misleading merely because they failed to disclose that the directors were mismanaging the company.
    Instead, Rubenstein makes the much more specific allegation that the proxy statements greatly
    understated the cost of executive and director compensation by failing to disclose the true cost of
    the Flight Program. Allegations that a proxy statement was misleading because it understated the
    cost of executive perquisites are not barred by our rule that “[a]llegations that a defendant failed to
    disclose facts material only to support an action for breach of state-law fiduciary duties ordinarily do
    not state a claim under the federal securities laws.” Field, 
    850 F.2d at 948
    .
    Our precedent similarly requires that we reject Defendants’ arguments that Jefferies’s
    disinterested board members made a valid business judgment when they declined to bring the
    section 14(a) claim on behalf of the company. In Galef v. Alexander, the defendant directors who did
    not receive improperly disclosed option grants authorized the company’s counsel to seek dismissal
    of a pending section 14(a) claim. 
    615 F.2d 51
    , 56 (2d Cir. 1980). We assumed that these defendant
    directors were disinterested under state law, and nonetheless held that federal policy required that
    they be found to lack the authority to initiate a business judgment dismissal of the section 14(a)
    claims against them. 
    Id. at 64
     (“[T]o the extent that [state] law would consider disinterested some
    defendant directors against whom claims were asserted, . . . [state] law would yield to federal
    policy.”). We noted that it was “inconceivable that directors who participated in and allegedly
    approved of the transaction under attack can be said to have exercised unbiased business judgment
    in declining suit based on that very transaction.” 
    Id. at 61
     (citation omitted). 4 The same applies
    here. Under Galef, because all of Jefferies’s board members approved the proxy statements at issue,
    federal policy forbids them from acting on Jefferies’s behalf to decline to pursue a section 14(a)
    claim against themselves.
    4
    Defendants rely on Abramowitz v. Posner, 
    672 F.2d 1025
     (2d Cir. 1982). Abramowitz—which
    concerned section 10(b) of the 1934 Act—is not inconsistent with Galef because in Abramowitz only
    a minority of the directors were named as defendants, and the non-defendant directors joined in
    refusing the demand to file suit. 
    Id. at 1027, 1028
    .
    5
    We are thus left to consider the merits of the District Court’s conclusion that Rubenstein
    failed to state a claim under section 14(a) because he failed to allege loss causation. Drawing all
    reasonable inferences in Rubenstein’s favor, we understand his complaint to allege that, had the
    proxy statement accurately portrayed the cost of the abuse of the Flight Program, Jefferies’s board
    would have lost reelection, which would have had the result of ending or reducing the practice of
    excessive personal travel on company airplanes. In finding that this theory was insufficient to make
    out loss causation under section 14(a), the District Court reasoned that “the mere fact that
    omissions in proxy materials, by permitting directors to win re-election, indirectly lead to financial
    loss through mismanagement will not create a sufficient nexus with the alleged monetary loss”.
    App’x 274 (citation omitted). To support this proposition, the District Court cited a district court
    case (Witchko v. Schorsch, No. 15-CV-6043, 
    2016 WL 3887289
    , at *7 (S.D.N.Y. June 9, 2016)) and a
    decision by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (General Electric Co. v. Cathcart, 
    980 F.2d 927
    ,
    933 (3d Cir. 1992)), neither of which rest its conclusion on authority binding in this Circuit.
    The District Court’s reliance on non-binding and out of circuit authority is problematic
    because previous decisions of this Court have sanctioned claims under section 14(a) where the
    plaintiff alleged that misleading statements related to director compensation in a company’s proxy
    materials led to the election of board members. Recognizing that “the compensation of directors
    and key officers . . . [is] explicitly covered by SEC disclosure regulations,” we have held that it is a
    “matter[] of direct and deep concern to shareholders in the exercise of their right to vote.”
    Maldonado, 
    597 F.2d at 796
    . “Since self-dealing presents opportunities for abuse of a corporate
    position of trust, the circumstances surrounding corporate transactions in which directors have a
    personal interest are directly relevant to a determination of whether they are qualified to exercise
    stewardship of the company.” 
    Id.
     We have previously noted that a plaintiff alleging a similar
    causation theory had “alleged a sufficient causal link between the claimed nondisclosures [of director
    remuneration] in the proxy statements and the elections which the statements sought to influence.”
    Galef, 
    615 F.2d at 65
    –66; see also Weisberg v. Coastal States Gas Corp., 
    609 F.2d 650
    , 654 (2d Cir. 1979).
    That said, it is also true that the rules governing a plaintiff’s ability to show causation in
    private securities litigation have evolved since our decisions in Maldonado, Weisberg, and Galef. In
    Virginia Bankshares Inc. v. Sandberg, the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff’s theory of transaction
    causation was insufficient to make out a claim under section 14(a) because it “turn[ed] on inferences
    about what the corporate directors would have thought and done without the minority shareholder
    approval unneeded to authorize [the challenged] action.” 
    501 U.S. 1083
    , 1105 (1991). This Court
    has since characterized Virginia Bankshares as foreclosing theories of causation “based on ‘a merely
    hypothetical . . . set of facts that never occurred,’” Grace v. Rosenstock, 
    228 F.3d 40
    , 48 (2000) (quoting
    Va. Bankshares, 
    501 U.S. at 1106
    ), or where the shareholders’ votes “were not required by law or
    corporate bylaw for the complained-of corporate action to proceed,” Koppel, 
    167 F.3d at 137
    . As a
    result, it is not clear—and we intimate no view on—whether Rubenstein has adequately alleged loss
    causation.
    6
    The District Court should consider these precedents discussed above in deciding whether
    the complaint alleges loss causation. We vacate the decision of the District Court not because we
    have determined that it is wrong—we express no view on that question—but because it was reached
    without consideration of controlling precedent. 5 The District Court may also consider whether
    Rubenstein plausibly alleged the materiality of the alleged omissions.
    Thus, we vacate the District Court’s dismissal of Rubenstein’s section 14(a) claim, and
    remand for further proceedings on this claim.
    CONCLUSION
    For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM with respect to Rubenstein’s claims under New
    York state law and VACATE with respect to Rubenstein’s claims under section 14(a) of the 1934
    Act the April 6, 2021, order and judgment of the District Court, and we REMAND the cause to the
    District Court for further proceedings on Rubenstein’s claim under section 14(a) of the 1934 Act
    consistent with this order.
    FOR THE COURT:
    Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk
    5
    We do not consider Defendants’ argument—which they did not raise below, and which has not
    been briefed by Rubenstein—that the subsequent annual election of directors undercuts
    Rubenstein’s section 14(a) causation claims. See Bogle-Assegai v. Connecticut, 
    470 F.3d 498
    , 504 (2d Cir.
    2006). The Defendants should be free to raise this argument in connection with the District Court’s
    renewed consideration of the sufficiency of the complaint.
    7