Allianz Global Investors GmbH v. Bank Of America Corporation
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:18-cv-10364
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Allianz v. Bank of America, Judge Schofield denied SocGen’s reconsideration motion, leaving intact the prior ruling on personal jurisdiction.
Societe Generale’s personal-jurisdiction challenge remained rejected under the earlier ruling; the plaintiffs’ request to file an opposition was denied as moot.
What happened
Allianz Global Investors GmbH v. Bank Of America Corporation involved Societe Generale’s request to revisit an earlier ruling that refused to dismiss it for lack of personal jurisdiction, meaning insufficient legal power over the defendant.
Societe Generale argued for the first time that chat messages relied on in the complaint had been attributed to it incorrectly and involved employees of another entity. The court said this argument had not been raised earlier and that the chat records did not clearly resolve the factual dispute.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield denied Societe Generale’s motion for reconsideration. The court also denied as moot the plaintiffs’ request to file an opposition and directed the clerk to close the related docket entries.
The detailed version
- Allianz Global Investors GmbH v. Bank Of America Corporation · No. 1:18-cv-10364
- Lorna Schofield
- May 19, 2020
Background
An earlier opinion granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. As relevant here, that opinion denied the motion as to Societe Generale, also called SocGen. SocGen then moved for reconsideration of that ruling.
SocGen’s arguments
SocGen argued for the first time on reconsideration that some chat messages relied on in the complaint—including one the earlier opinion viewed as plausibly referring to unlawful conduct—had been attributed to SocGen incorrectly. SocGen asserted that the actual participants were employees of an unrelated entity.
The court held that SocGen had waived this argument by not raising it in its original motion to dismiss. It explained that reconsideration is available only for an intervening change in controlling law, newly available evidence, clear error, or the need to prevent manifest injustice. It is not a way to present new facts or arguments or to relitigate earlier issues.
Merits of the reconsideration request
The court also rejected SocGen’s argument on its merits. Even accepting SocGen’s position that the chat transcripts were documents integral to the complaint, the transcripts did not clearly show that the complaint had misidentified the participants. The email domain cited by SocGen did not establish that the sender had no relationship with SocGen. The court further stated that resolving the parties’ factual dispute would require additional investigation that was not appropriate at the motion-to-dismiss stage.
Because the court declined to accept SocGen’s representations about the disputed chats, it did not address SocGen’s arguments concerning whether personal jurisdiction was lacking based only on the remaining chats.
Ruling
Judge Lorna G. Schofield ordered that SocGen’s motion for reconsideration be DENIED. The plaintiffs’ request to file an opposition to SocGen’s motion was DENIED as moot. The clerk was directed to close Docket Nos. 399 and 402.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.