FDIC Files First Failed Bank Lawsuit in Florida: Even though Florida has had the second highest number of bank failures of any of the states during the current bank failure wave (trailing only Georgia), the FDIC had not filed any failed bank lawsuit in Florida—until now. On March 13, 2012, the FDIC filed an action in the Middle District of Florida in the agency’s capacity as receiver of the failed Florida Community Bank of Immokalee, Florida, against the failed bank’s former CEO and six of the failed bank’s former directors. A copy of the FDIC’s complaint can be found here.

 

The bank failed on January 29, 2010. In its complaint, the FDIC alleges that the bank’s collapse was caused by “grossly negligent loan underwriting and loan administration, resulting in excessive and dangerous concentrations” of commercial real estate loans and of acquisition and development loans. The FDIC seeks to recover on losses of in excess of $62 million dollars in connection with six specific loans. The FDIC asserts state law claims of negligence against the former directors and against the former CEO, as well as claims of gross negligence under FIRREA against all of the individual defendants.

 

The FDIC’s lawsuit in the Florida Community Bank case is the 26th that the FDIC has filed in connection with the current bank failure wave. It is also the eighth that the FDIC has filed so far in 2012. Though the FDIC has now filed 26 lawsuits, according to the FDIC’s website and as of February 14, 2012, the FDIC has authorized suits in connection with 49 failed institutions against 427 individuals for D&O liability with damage claims of at least $7.8 billion. Thus, there are at least 23 additional lawsuits approved and in the pipeline. And it seems like that when the FDIC next updates the authorized lawsuit figures on its website, there will be yet other lawsuits authorized. As I have previously discussed, it seems likely that we will see many of these forthcoming lawsuits during 2012.

 

CIT Group Subprime-Related Suit Settles for $75 Million: In the latest of the subprime and credit crisis-related securities class action lawsuits to settle, on March 13, 2012, the parties to the CIT Group subprime suit filed with the court a stipulation of settlement reflecting that the case had been settled for $75 million. A copy of the parties’ settlement stipulation can be found here.

 

As reflected here, the plaintiffs first filed suit against CIT Group and certain of its directors and officers in July 2008. The plaintiffs alleged that CIT’s public financial statements failed to account for tens of millions of dollars in loans to Silver State Helicopter, which loans were highly unlikely to be repaid and should have been written off. The plaintiffs also alleged that the company had misrepresented the performance of its subprime home lending and student loan portfolios.

 

In November 2009, CIT Group itself filed for bankruptcy and the company was dismissed out of the lawsuit. As discussed here (scroll down), on June 10, 2010, Southern District of New York Judge Barbara Jones denied the remaining defendants’ motion to dismiss. Following the dismissal motion ruling, the parties entered mediation that ultimately resulted in the settlement. The settlement is subject to court approval. (CIT Group rather conspicuously emerged from bankruptcy after only six weeks.)

 

The CIT Group settlement is noteworthy if for no other reason than that it came about in 2012. Even though there are many subprime and credit crisis-related securities cases pending, including many that have already passed the motion to dismiss stage, the pace of settlement of these cases seems to have slowed to a crawl (indeed, in its recently released annual study of securities class action lawsuit settlements, refer here, Cornerstone Research specifically noted the slow settlement pace of the credit crisis suits as one reason why both the number and aggregate monetary value of securities suit settlements was down significantly in 2011).

 

Readers of this blog may be interested to know whether or to what extent D&O insurance contributed toward the CIT Group settlement. The settlement stipulation is nonspecific, but it does suggest that insurance is playing a role in the settlement of this case. For example, in describing the settlement amount, the stipulation provides that within a specified time of the court’s preliminary approval of the settlement, the defendants or CIT shall pay or “cause their insurers” to pay into escrow the $75 million settlement amount. In his March 14, 2012 Am Law Litigation Daily article about the settlement (here), Victor Li reports that “all 13 current and former CIT executives named as defendants were indemnified by CIT and covered by D&O insurance.”

 

I have in any event added the CIT Group settlement to my running tally of subprime and credit crisis-related lawsuit settlements, which can be accessed here.

 

SEC Files Enforcement Action against Three Former Thornburg Mortgage Executives: In the latest civil subprime and credit crisis-related enforcement action, the SEC on March 13, 2012 filed a civil enforcement action in the District of New Mexico against three former executives of Thornburg Mortgage, including the company’s former CEO, Larry Goldstone. Prior to its 2008 collapse, Thornburg was the second largest mortgage originator in the United States. The SEC’s complaint can be found here. The SEC’s March 13, 2012 press release about the case can be found here.

 

The SEC alleges that the three defendants schemed to fraudulently overstate the company’s income by more than $400 million and falsely record a profit rather than an actual loss for the fourth quarter in its 2007 annual report. The complaint alleges that in the days before the company filed its 2007 10-K, the company was facing a severe liquidity crisis due to the company’s receipt of numerous margin calls totaling more than $300 million. The complaint alleges that the defendants withheld information about the margin calls from investors and even from the company’s own auditors. However, two hours after the 10-K filing, the company received additional margin calls that it was unable to meet. The company was forced to disclose these developments and soon thereafter the company disclosed that it would be filing an amended annual report. By the time the company filed its amended 10-K, its share price had collapsed. The company never recovered and ultimately filed for bankruptcy.

 

The March 13, 2012 statement of two of the individual defendants regarding the SEC’s enforcement action can be found here.

 

Neither the SEC’s press release nor complaint explains why the complaint is only being filed now, more than four years after many of the events described in the complaint. The SEC has faced some criticism for allegedly failing to act aggressively enough in the wake of the global financial crisis. Perhaps in recognition of these criticisms, the SEC itself emphasizes in its press release that with the Thornburg Mortgage enforcement action SEC has now filed financial crisis related enforcement actions against 98 individuals and entities.

 

The press release also links to a page on the SEC’s website, entitled “SEC Enforcement Actions: Addressing Misconduct That Led to or Arose from the Financial Crisis.” The website page makes for interesting reading, but it is hard to shake the impression that it is a relatively short list of items, in light of the magnitude of the financial crisis and in light of the over 230 subprime and credit crisis related securities class action lawsuits that investors have filed. Given the long lag between the events involved and the filing of the Thornburg Mortgage enforcement action, it may be that there are more cases that are still in the pipeline, perhaps many, relating to the financial crisis.

 

Thornburg Mortgage and certain of its directors and officers were also the subject of a separate investor lawsuit, although as discussed in detail here, the first of the investor lawsuits was filed in August 2007, well before the events described in the SEC’s enforcement action. As discussed here, in January 2010, District of New Mexico James Browning granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss large parts of the investors’ lawsuit, although parts of the case survived, and perhaps critically, the investors’ claims against Goldstone, the former CEO, largely survived. In February 2012, the parties to the investor suit advised the court that the plaintifs had reached a settlement with 13 individual defendants, including Goldstone. The parties hope to file their settlement documents with the court in April.

 

As Alison Frankel lnotes in her March 14, 2012 Am Law Litigation Daily article about the settlement (here), once again the SEC "once again lags the private bar." .(Hat top to Frankel for the link to the letter in which the parties to the securities suit advised the court of the settlement.)

 

A March 13, 2012 Huffington Post article discussing the SEC’s Thornburg Mortgage enforcement action can be found here.

 

Securities Suit Against U.S.-Listed Chinese Company Survives Dismissal Motion: In a recent post (here), I raised the question of how far the plaintiffs are really going to be able to go in the wave of securities class action lawsuits that have been filed against U.S.-listed Chinese companies. While it still remains to be seen how far these cases ultimately will go, at least one of these cases filed in 2011 has survived the initial dismissal motion.

 

As discussed here, in April 2011, the plaintiffs first filed their action in the Central District of California against ZST Digital Networks and certain of its directors and officers. The plaintiffs alleged the in 2008, the company reported to the SEC revenues of over $50 million and over $100 million in 2009, but reported to the Chinese governmental agency the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) revenues of only a very small fraction of those amounts. The company’s 2010 10-K acknowledged the discrepancy between the figures and stated that the company’s reports to the SAIC were not in compliance with applicable regulations.

 

The defendants moved to dismiss the action on the grounds that the complaint failed to meet threshold pleading requirements. Among other things, the defendants argued that there was no particularized allegation that it was the SEC filings and not the SAIC filings that were untrue.

 

In a February 14, 2012 order (here) Judge Gary Allen Feess granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss. In responding to the defendants’ argument that the plaintiffs have insufficiently pled which of the company’s filings were untrue, Judge Feess noted that the two filed reports “differ by a factor of over two thousand,” and the $6 million profit reported in the SEC filing contrasts particularly sharply with the loss reported in China. The Court said the defendants’ preferred explanation “merely dances around the issue” without explaining how the company came to report such widely different figures.

 

The court’s rejection of the defendants’ argument that the plaintiffs’ had insufficiently alleged which of the two filings was untrue stands in contrast to the November 2011 conclusion that a different Central District of California Judge reached in the China Century Dragon Media case (about which refer here). In that prior ruling, the court found that the plaintiffs had not sufficiently alleged, in connection with an alleged discrepancy in regulatory filings, that the SEC filings were untrue. The court in that prior case had allowed the plaintiffs leave to replead, however.

 

Judge Feess did dismiss certain other aspects of the plaintiffs’ case without prejudice. But his ruling that the discrepancy between the SEC filings and the SAIC filings was sufficient to overcome the initial pleading hurdles could be relevant in a number of the other pending cases involving U.S.-listed Chinese companies. Whether or not the plaintiffs ultimately succeed with many of these cases remains to be seen. But getting over the initial pleading threshold is an important first step.

 

A March 13, 2012 case study of the opinion in the ZST Digital Networks case written by Stephen Brodsky of the Bernstein LItowitz firm can be found here (registration required).

 

Four Say-on-Pay Lawsuits Are Dismissed in Quick Succession: In a recent post (here), I reported on comments from some observers that investors unhappy with companies’ responses to negative say-on-pay votes will likely continue to pursue say-on-pay related litigation in 2012. But any investor (or their counsel) considering filing a say-on-pay related lawsuit will want to take a look at David Bario’s March 12, 2012 Am Law Litigation Daily article (here) reporting that in quick succession, motions to dismiss recently have been granted in four of the pending say-on–pay lawsuits. (The original article listed only three, but an update at the bottom of the article adds the fourth case to the list.)

 

According to the article, dismissal motions have been granted just in the last two weeks in the say-on-pay lawsuits that were filed against the boards of Intersil Corporation; Umpqua Holding Corporation; Jacobs Engineering; and BioMed Realty Trust. As far as I know, only one of the say-on-pay lawsuits has survived the initial dismissal motion; as noted here, the say-on-pay suit involving Cincinnati Bell did survive the dismissal motion. However, there have been other cases that have been dismissed. Given that there were only ten total suits filed out of the approximately 41 companies that sustained negative say-on-pay votes, the track record for these case does not look great, and could not be encouraging for any prospective plaintiff that might consider filing a similar action in connection with any company that sustains a negative say-on-pay vote during the 2012 proxy season.

 

Speakers’ Corner: On Tuesday March 27, 2012, I will be participating as a panelist at the C5 Forum on D&O Liability Insurance in London. I will be speaking about the latest U.S. legal developments affecting the D&O exposure of non-U.S. companies. Information about the conference, including registration information, can be found here. If you are attending the conference in London, I hope you will take the time to introduce yourself, particularly if we have not previously met.

 

A Video for St. Patrick’s Day: You will definitely want to round up your mates to watch this St. Patrick’s Day video featuring Gareth Longrass and his faithful dog Roy. Roy is a legend is Gloucestershire. Cheers, everyone.