SCOTUS to consider class action claims against IndyMac

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to consider whether class action claims against IndyMac Bancorp Inc. should be able to proceed.

The court agreed on Monday to decide whether the three-year window for filing certain securities claims is suspended if investors can show they would have been parties in a previously filed class action lawsuit if it had not been dismissed.

The appeal to the Supreme Court by Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi was done so after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the claims for lack of standing.

Previously, two other lawsuits were filed, one by the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit and another by the Wyoming State Treasurer and the Wyoming Retirement System in which the plaintiffs had hoped to represent a class of those who bought certificates in some of the 106 offerings made by underwriters of IndyMac.

Kaplan named the Wyoming plaintiffs as lead plaintiff and refused to consider claims arising from the purchase of securities that the Wyoming entities had not bought.

The Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System, along with others, moved to intervene so they could assert claims on behalf of the certificates they had purchased, but they had already missed the three-year statute of repose in the Securities Act of 1933.

In an attempt to toll the statute, Detroit PFRS and others cited the 1974 Supreme Court opinion in American Pipe & Construct Co. v. Utah.

Kaplan dismissed this argument. After an unsuccessful appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The defendants in the case are banks that were underwriters for the offerings. They are units of Credit Suisse Group AG , Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley.

The court will hear oral arguments and issue a decision in its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2015.

Supreme Court of the United States case number: 13-640

From Legal Newsline: Kyla Asbury can be reached at classactions@legalnewsline.com.