ORDER
Plaintiffs are 32 investors in seven oil and gas leases. The promised “black gold” failed to well up in sufficient quantities, and plaintiffs apparently lost their money. They now sue those they believe responsible. Defendants are eleven people, two corporations and one economic entity of an unspecified variety, who were either the promoters of the investment or affiliated with the enterprise in which plaintiffs’ money was invested.
Plaintiffs sue all of the defendants on 18 counts of fraud, securities violations, breach of contract, conversion and other state statutory and common law grounds. Several of the defendants, Keystone Oil Company and L.D. Haley, Laura H. Browder, Mary Ann Haley and Jim Bob Haley, now bring this motion to dismiss based primarily on Rules 12(b)(6) and 9(b).
I. FAILURE TO PLEAD FRAUD IN ACCORD WITH RULE 9(b).
Federal Rule 9(b) requires in averments of fraud that “the circumstances constituting fraud ... shall be stated with particularity.” In the instant case, defendants say Rule 9(b) means that fraud must be pled with particularity with respect to each individual defendant. The Complaint certainly does not do so; it lumps all of the defendants together. The plaintiffs allege that each defendant is the agent of the others, ¶ 18, and that all defendants aided and abetted one another in their conspiracy to defraud plaintiffs. ¶ 19. Every allegation in the Complaint, be it manipulation, misrepresentation, conversion or breach of contract, is levelled at “defendants, and each of them.” See, e.g., ¶¶ 58, 67. These 14 defendants, with roles as diverse as promoter, driller and corporation officer, are treated as a monolithic enterprise whose sole purpose was to separate plaintiffs from their money. Except for the introductory paragraphs that name and identify the defendants, the Complaint contains not one specific reference to the individual involvement of any of the defendants. See, e.g., ¶¶ 23-26, 28-37, 48. The pleading requirements of the Federal Civil Rules are indeed liberal, but they demand more than this.
Plaintiffs argue that the law does not require them to attribute particular statements or acts to particular defendants, and that they have met the requirements of Rule 9(b). They rely primarily on
Bosse v. Crowell Collier & MacMillan,
Nor does a close reading of
Zatkin v. Primuth
bear out plaintiffs’ contention that one need not plead specific fraud by individual defendants. There the court noted an exception to the particularity requirement of 9(b) in cases of corporate fraud where the false or misleading information is conveyed in a prospectus or registration statement,
Similarly, the
Equity Funding
case— which was the only authority relied upon by the
Zatkin
court — actually supports the defendants’ argument. The District Court in that action allowed somewhat more general pleading to survive a motion to dismiss only because: (1) it was multidistrict litigation; (2) it involved several class actions; (3) the fraud took place over a period of eight years; and (4) the complaint broke the defendants down into groups of primary offenders and aiders and abettors and pled with particularity the basis of liability of each group and its relation to the other group.
On the other side of the scale, there is ample authority for defendants’ position that those seeking redress must distinguish among those they sue and enlighten each defendant as to his or her part in the alleged fraud.
E.g., Goldman v. Belden,
(1) the nature of each individual defendant’s participation in the fraud, including facts constituting scienter and an explanation of the defendant’s duty toward the plaintiff; (2) whether the defendant is being sued as a primary defendant or as an aider and abettor; and (3) as to allegations on information and belief, a statement of the source of the information and the reasons upon which the belief is founded.
Goldberg v. Meridor,
II. FAILURE TO STATE A CLAIM UNDER § 17.
Counts I and II seek damages under § 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, 15 U.S.C. § 77q(a), even though that provision
*1053
does not expressly provide for a private right of action for damages. Defendants have made a strong argument that such a right does not exist. Plaintiffs’ only response is the citation of
Stephenson v. Calpine Conifers II, Ltd.,
The
Stephenson
case in fact
held
no such thing. The court’s remarks about § 17(a) were wholly nugatory, since it had already decided on other grounds that the defendants’ were entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs’ § 17 claim.
Such vagrant observations about important questions are especially unauthoritative when unaccompanied by analysis.
Stephenson
relied wholly on the Second Circuit’s decision in
Kirshner v. United States,
The proper focus of a search for an implied cause of action is legislative intent.
Touche Ross, supra,
442.U.S. at 575-77,
Ibid.
The first element of the inquiry is easily dispensed with, as § 17(a) does not benefit any particular class, but represents “a general censure of fraudulent practices; only subsequent provisions enable equitable and criminal causes of action.”
Landry v. All American Assurance Co.,
‘the fact that a federal statute has been violated and some person harmed does not automatically give rise to a private cause of action in favor of that person.’ Instead, our task is limited solely to determining whether Congress intended to create the private right of action asserted.
Touche Ross, supra,
The legislative history of the statute reveals no intention to create a private right under § 17(a); §§ 11 and 12 create and define the civil liabilities imposed by the act and the machinery for their enforcement. H.R.Rep. No. 85, 73d Cong., 1st Sess. 9-10 (1933). The literature of both contemporaneous and subsequent commentators is unanimous that § 17 was meant only to afford a basis for injunctive relief and criminal prosecution, not to supplement the civil liabilities set out in §§ 11 and 12. See Landis,
Liability Sections of Securities Act,
18 Am.Acct. 330, 331 (1933); Douglas & Bates,
Federal Securities Act of 1933,
43 Yale L.J. 171, 181-82 (1933); 3 L. Loss, Securities Regulation 1785-86 (1961). The courts which have examined the question in light of the
Touche Ross-Transamerica
analysis have come to the same conclusion.
See, e.g., Landry, supra,
*1054
Under the approach taken by the Supreme Court in
Transamerica, supra,
The 1933 Act is a much narrower statute. It deals only with disclosure and fraud in the sale of securities. It has but two important substantive provisions, §§ 5 and 17(a). Non-compliance with § 5 results in civil liability under § 12(1). Faulty compliance results in liability under § 11. And § 17(a) has its counterpart in § 12(2). It all makes a rather neat pattern. Within the area of §§ 5 and 17(a), §§ 11 and 12 ... are all embracing.
3 L. Loss, Securities Regulation 1784-85 (1961). Those provisions, §§ 11 and 12,-indeed confer specific rights of action upon purchasers, but the plaintiff must comply with certain procedural limitations before a claim may be brought.
See, e.g.,
§ 13 of the Act, 15 U.S.C. § 77m. To now create a cause of action under § 17(a) without those limitations would be to throw the proverbial monkey wrench into Congress’ carefully wrought machinery.
Landry, supra,
The Supreme Court’s own treatment of a parallel situation in regard to § 17(a) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act is highly instructive:
Further justification for our decision not to imply [sic] the private remedy ... may be found in the statutory scheme of which § 17(a) is a part. [S]ection 17(a) is flanked by provisions of the 1934 Act that explicitly grant private causes of action____ Obviously, then, when Congress wished to provide a private damages remedy, it knew how to do so and did so expressly.
Touche Ross, supra,
III. FAILURE TO STATE A CLAIM UNDER RICO.
Count VII of the Complaint alleges violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, (“RICO”) 18 U.S.C. § 1961
et seq.
Much has been written about civil liability under RICO — not all of it edifying. All the authorities agree that RICO is extraordinarily broad as written, and for good reason. RICO, enacted as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, “was designed in a multifacted campaign against the pervasive presence of organized crime infiltrated in American business and trade. The preamble of the statute states its purpose: ‘To seek the eradication of organized crime in the United States____’ Pub.L. No. 91-452, 84 Stat. 922-23 (1970).”
Moss v. Morgan Stanley, Inc.,
The only predicate acts alleged here are securities violations and use of the wires and mails to defraud. Complaint ¶ 65. These acts are expressly included in RICO, yet finding acts within the broad ambit of that statute begins, rather than concludes our inquiry. “[It] is a ‘familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.’ ”
United Steelworkers of America v. Weber,
In the civil context, the inherent check of prosecutorial discretion is absent. There is thus “every reason why the application of RICO should be restricted sharply to organized crime and the enterprises on which its talons have fastened.”
Moss v. Morgan Stanley, supra,
If read as myopically as plaintiffs suggest, RICO would literally make a federal case out of nearly every instance of business fraud. As one perceptive court put it:
The civil remedies provisions of RICO were not designed to convert every fraud or misrepresentation action involving corporations who use the mails or telephones to conduct their businesses in interstate commerce into treble damage RICO actions. Rather the RICO civil provisions were enacted as an additional tool for use in the eradication of organized crime.
Waterman S.S. Corp. v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc.,
It is equally implausible that Congress meant to bestow treble damages upon some plaintiffs as a sort of reward for being clever enough to sue under RICO rather than only under the traditional securities laws, where less ambitious plaintiffs would receive one third as much for an identical injury.
Harper v. New Japan Securities Int’l, Inc.,
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RICO constitutes a frontal assault on the economic base of organized crime. It is a civil weapon to be wielded against those engaged in organized crime who have gained an unfair competitive or financial advantage through criminal means associated with racketeering.
United States v. Turkette,
In the antitrust context, the Supreme Court has written that
“for
plaintiffs to recover treble damages on account of § 7 violations, they must prove more than injury causally linked to an alleged presence in the market. Plaintiffs must prove
antitrust
injury, which is to say injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants’ acts unlawful.”
Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc.,
A “racketeering enterprise injury” might be found if a civil RICO defendant’s capacity to harm the plaintiff is enhanced by an infusion of cash from illicit activities,
see Landmark Savings & Loan, supra,
Here, plaintiffs have alleged only that the injury to their investments resulted from securities fraud which happened to involve use of the mails and wires. Therefore, plaintiffs lack standing to bring a civil action under RICO,
see e.g., Landmark Savings & Loan, supra,
ACCORDINGLY, the COMPLAINT is hereby DISMISSED WITH LEAVE TO AMEND within twenty days. Counts I, II, III, IV, XII, XIII and XVIII are dismissed for failure to comply with Rule 9(b); Counts I and II are dismissed without leave to amend for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted; and Count VII is also dismissed pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), but with leave to amend. The *1057 remaining counts, all based on state law causes of action, are dismissed for lack of pendent jurisdiction.
SO ORDERED.
