United States: Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Filing A Class Action Tolls Statute of Repose Under Federal Securities Laws

Last year, we reported on the Second Circuit's ruling in Police & Fire Retirement System of City of Detroit v. IndyMac MBS, Inc. (pdf), 721 F.3d 95 (2d Cir. 2013), that the filing of a class action does not toll the statute of repose in the Securities Act of 1933 for would-be class members who later seek to intervene or file their own suits. On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it has chosen to review the Second Circuit's ruling. Now, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to establish a uniform national rule that the tolling principles applicable to statutes of limitation under American Pipe and Construction Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538 (1974), do not apply in the very different statute-of-repose context.

In American Pipe, the Supreme Court held that the filing of a class action suspends the statute of limitations as to all putative class members so long as they remain members of the proposed class. But lower courts have reached different conclusions on whether this American Pipe tolling applies to the three-year statute of repose for claims under Sections 11, 12(a)(2), and 15 of the Securities Act. As our previous post described, in the IndyMac case, the Second Circuit rejected an effort by putative class members to revive class claims under Section 11 of the Securities Act after the period of repose had expired. (The district court had first concluded that the named plaintiffs lacked standing to assert the claims.) The Second Circuit reasoned that the American Pipe rule cannot be applied to the Securities Act's statute of repose because the Supreme Court held in Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U.S. 350 (1991), that equitable tolling does not apply to a repose period and because the Rules Enabling Act does not allow a court to use Rule 23—the source of any legal tolling—to "abridge, enlarge or modify" the repose promised by the Securities Act.

One of the absent class members who had sought to intervene petitioned for a writ of certiorari. It argued that IndyMac conflicted with a Tenth Circuit decision, Joseph v. Wiles, 223 F.3d 1155 (10th Cir. 2000), which held that American Pipe tolling applied to the Securities Act's statute of repose. The petitioner also asserted a conflict with Federal Circuit decisions applying American Pipe to time limits for suits against the United States. In my view the claimed conflicts are mirages. That said, the Supreme Court—having now granted certiorari—has a perfect opportunity to bless the Second Circuit's well-reasoned conclusion that there is no basis for American Pipe tolling of the repose period created by Section 13 of the Securities Act. That provision is an absolute bar to stale claims. Would-be plaintiffs should not be able to use American Pipe to bring such claims after Section 13 has cut off liability for a challenged securities offering.

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