Jalbert v. Sec. & Exch. Comm'n
Jalbert v. Sec. & Exch. Comm'n
Opinion of the Court
I. Background
A. Factual Background
The facts are set forth as described in the complaint, attached exhibits, and public record.
1. F-Squared's Securities Violations
F-Squared Investments, Inc. was a Wellesley-based investment adviser. (Compl. Ex. A ¶ 5). It was founded by Howard Present in 2006. (Id. ¶ 6). It launched its first "AlphaSector" index in October 2008. (Id. ¶ 5). The "AlphaSector" investment strategy was an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") sector rotation strategy. (Id. ¶ 1).
Between October 2008 and September 2013, F-Squared marketed the AlphaSector strategy. (Id. ¶ 7). F-Squared's marketing materials included inaccurate statements portraying AlphaSector indices as actual performance in the period from April 2001 to September 2008. (Id. ¶ 29). Specifically, F-Squared claimed the strategy *291was "not back[-]tested," when in fact it was. (Id. ¶¶ 1, 7 n.3).
By June 30, 2014, approximately $28.5 billion had been invested pursuant to 75 AlphaSector indices. (Id. ¶ 7 n.3). $13 billion of that amount was in mutual-fund assets sub-advised by F-Squared. (Id. ¶ 5).
2. The Settlement with the SEC
At some point, the SEC began investigating whether F-Squared had violated federal securities laws. In December 2014, F-Squared and the SEC entered into a settlement in order to resolve the matter. The settlement involved an administrative proceeding, not a civil enforcement action.
The settlement took the form of an "Offer of Settlement of F-Squared Investments, Inc." that was accepted by the SEC, although presumably the terms were negotiated in advance. The settlement agreement indicated that F-Squared "submits this Offer of Settlement ... in anticipation of public administrative and cease-and-desist proceedings to be instituted against it by the [SEC]" pursuant to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and the Investment Company Act of 1940. (Def. Ex. 1 § I).
Among other things, F-Squared admitted to certain facts; acknowledged that its conduct violated the federal securities laws; and admitted that the SEC had jurisdiction over it and over the matters at issue. (Id. § VII). F-Squared also "consent[ed] to the entry of the attached Order by Commission, in which the Commission" (1) found that F-Squared willfully violated §§ 204, 206, and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act and various rules promulgated under that act, and aided and abetted a violation of § 34(b) of the Investment Company Act; (2) ordered that F-Squared cease and desist from committing any future violations; (3) ordered that F-Squared "pay disgorgement of [$30 million] to the United States Treasury"; (4) ordered that it pay a "civil money penalty" of $5 million to the Treasury; and (5) ordered that it comply with certain undertakings, largely relating to compliance. (Id. ).
The "Offer of Settlement" also included the following language:
By submitting this Offer, Respondent hereby acknowledges its waiver of those rights specified in Rules 240(c)(4) and (5) [ 17 C.F.R. 201.240(c)(4) and (5) ] of the Commission's Rules of Practice.
*292(Id. § V). Rule 240(c)(4) provides as follows:
(4) By submitting an offer of settlement, the person making the offer waives, subject to acceptance of the offer:
(i) All hearings pursuant to the statutory provisions under which the proceeding is to be or has been instituted;
(ii) The filing of proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law;
(iii) Proceedings before, and an initial decision by, a hearing officer;
(iv) All post-hearing procedures; and
(v) Judicial review by any court.
17 C.F.R. 201.240(c)(4) (emphasis added).
F-Squared then transferred $35 million to the Treasury Department. (Compl. ¶ 59). No portion of that money was paid to the present or former clients of F-Squared. (Id. ).
3. Later Developments
On July 8, 2015, F-Squared filed for bankruptcy. (Id. ¶ 60). Craig Jalbert was appointed by the bankruptcy court as trustee of the F2 Liquidating Trust, F-Squared's successor-in-interest. (Id. ¶ 11).
On June 5, 2017, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kokesh , described in greater detail below.
B. Procedural Background
The trustee filed this complaint on October 26, 2017. He seeks to represent a class of all securities-law violators who have paid disgorgement to the SEC over the past six years. The complaint does not distinguish between disgorgement orders in administrative or judicial proceedings. It asserts two counts, both brought under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"),
The SEC has moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and failure to state a claim pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).
II. Legal Standard
On a motion to dismiss, the court "must assume the truth of all well-plead[ed] facts and give ... plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences therefrom." Ruiz v. Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp. ,
*293III. Analysis
The trustee contends that in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Kokesh , which was issued in 2017, the $30 million disgorgement paid to the SEC as part of the 2015 settlement is invalid. The trustee has multiple hurdles to overcome to establish such a claim. First, and as set forth below, the SEC has explicit statutory authority to enter disgorgement orders in administrative proceedings. Thus, the settlement is valid unless the SEC's exercise of its statutory authority to obtain disgorgement was somehow illegal. Second, and as noted above, F-Squared entered into a binding settlement with the SEC in which it expressly waived judicial review. Therefore, the Court may consider the trustee's claims only if that waiver is somehow void or otherwise ineffective. Third, Congress has created a process for judicial review of SEC orders in administrative proceedings, and that process does not involve the federal district courts. Accordingly, this Court has subject-matter jurisdiction over the trustee's claims only if that statutory scheme is somehow inapplicable.
A. The Supreme Court's Decision in Kokesh
Following the stock market crash in 1929, Congress enacted a series of laws to regulate the securities industry. Among other things, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Exchange Act") created the SEC to enforce federal securities laws. "Congress granted the [SEC] power to prescribe 'rules and regulations ... as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors.' " Kokesh ,
"Initially, the only statutory remedy available to the SEC in an enforcement action was an injunction barring future violations of securities laws."
In 1990, as part of the Penny Stock Reform Act, Congress authorized the SEC to seek monetary civil penalties. See 15 U.S.C. §§ 77h-1(g), 77t(d), 78u(d)(3), 78u-2, 80a-9(d), 80a-41(e), 80b-3(i), and 80b-9(e). That act also specifically authorized the SEC for the first time to seek disgorgement in administrative proceedings. See 15 U.S.C. §§ 77h-1(e), 78u-2(e), 78u-3(e), 80a-9(e) & f(5), and 80b-3(j) & k(5). Although the wording of the particular statutory provisions varied slightly, all provided that the SEC "may enter an order requiring accounting and disgorgement, including reasonable interest." (For the sake of simplicity, the Court will refer to the various statutory enactments, which are largely identical, in the singular.) Congress did not, however, provide statutory authority to the SEC to obtain disgorgement in civil enforcement proceedings.
In Kokesh , the Supreme Court was presented with the following question: whether disgorgement ordered in a civil enforcement proceeding constituted a "penalty" subject to the five-year statute of limitations set forth in
The Court observed in a footnote: "Nothing in this opinion should be interpreted as an opinion on whether courts possess authority to order disgorgement in SEC enforcement proceedings or on whether courts have properly applied disgorgement principles in this context."
Since Kokesh , various parties have attempted to challenge court-ordered disgorgement as exceeding the SEC's statutory authority. Some courts have interpreted Kokesh narrowly. See, e.g. , SEC v. Sample ,
B. Whether the Statute Permitted the Imposition of Disgorgement
The trustee argues that the SEC's imposition of disgorgement was unlawful because it was a penalty, not a remedial action intended to benefit investor victims, and because the SEC did not conduct an accounting. (See Compl. ¶ 31 (alleging that the agency did not "conduct[ ] an accounting or return[ ] funds to investor victims.") ). Because Congress has separately provided statutory authority for civil money penalties, the trustee reasons that the SEC is "double-dipping despite statutory limitations" and attempting to rewrite "clear statutory terms." (Mem. in Opp. at 13 (citing Util. Air Regulatory Group v. EPA ,
As noted, Congress in 1990 expressly gave the SEC the authority to obtain disgorgement in administrative proceedings. Whether Congress intended only to provide authority for "disgorgement-as-remedy," but not "disgorgement-as penalty," is not obvious from the statutory language. The statute simply uses the word "disgorgement"; it does not say, for example, "disgorgement of profits" or "disgorgement of proceeds in order to provide restitution to victims."
The trustee argues that the term "disgorgement" necessarily excludes punitive disgorgement because the provision permitting civil penalties elsewhere in the statute necessarily precludes other monetary penalties. But many statutory schemes provide for multiple, overlapping forms of penalties (such as imprisonment, fines, and forfeitures in criminal cases). Furthermore, as the trustee himself notes, a broad interpretation of "disgorgement" had been accepted by the courts since the 1970s. It is a basic canon of statutory construction that "Congress is understood to legislate against a background of common-law adjudicatory principles." Astoria Fed. Sav. and Loan Ass'n v. Solimino ,
In any event, this Court need not resolve that issue. Whatever the merits of the trustee's argument as a matter of statutory interpretation, that argument has clearly been waived.
C. Whether the Waiver Is Valid
As noted above, F-Squared, as part of the settlement, clearly and unambiguously waived the right to judicial review by any court. The trustee nonetheless disputes the validity of the waiver on multiple grounds.
First, the trustee contends that the settlement was "narrowly drawn in a manner that does not reach this case." (Mem. in Opp. at 17). In support, the trustee argues that the waiver only applied to "direct reviews of orders and not to collateral claims under the APA." (Id. ). But the waiver does not say that; instead, by its terms, it applies to "[j]udicial review by any court." A claim under the APA seeks judicial review of an agency action. There is nothing in the settlement to suggest that the waiver of judicial review was limited solely to direct review, as opposed to collateral review under the APA.
Second, the trustee contends that the waiver was "unenforceable because it was based on a mistake of law." (Id. ). Specifically, he argues that the settlement was the product of a mutual mistake because the parties were proceeding on the incorrect assumption that the SEC had the authority to impose punitive disgorgement, and that no one realized the mistake until the Supreme Court in Kokesh ruled to the contrary.
*296But even if Kokesh changed disgorgement law as to civil enforcement proceedings-and the Supreme Court specifically noted it did not-that opinion says nothing about the application of disgorgement in administrative proceedings. Again, there is no question that the statute, then and now, explicitly permits the SEC to require disgorgement in administrative proceedings. The trustee does not contend that the statute is unconstitutional. Rather, and in essence, the trustee is claiming that (1) the SEC misinterpreted the meaning of the term "disgorgement" in the statute; (2) by interpreting the statute too broadly, it was acting outside the scope of its statutory authority-that is, acting ultra vires ; and (3) by doing so, the SEC was acting unconstitutionally, in violation of principles of separation of powers. According to the trustee, that is an argument that "may not be waived or bargained away." (Id. at 13).
That argument fails, at a minimum, at the last step. Even if the SEC's application of its disgorgement authority was ultra vires , any such error by the agency was clearly waivable. In City of Arlington v. FCC ,
A court's power to decide a case is independent of whether its decision is correct....
That is not so for agencies charged with administering congressional statutes. Both their power to act and how they are to act is authoritatively prescribed by Congress, so that when they act improperly, no less than when they act beyond their jurisdiction, what they do is ultra vires. Because the question-whether framed as an incorrect application of agency authority or an assertion of authority not conferred-is always whether the agency has gone beyond what Congress has permitted it to do, there is no principled basis for carving out some arbitrary subset of such claims as "jurisdictional."
Since City of Arlington , multiple courts of appeals have held that a party may waive an ultra vires challenge to agency action. See, e.g., PGS Geophysical AS v. Iancu ,
It is thus abundantly clear that any claim that the SEC exceeded its jurisdiction is waivable, and that F-Squared waived its right to assert such a claim. Accordingly, to the extent that the trustee is claiming that the settlement exceeded the jurisdictional authority of the SEC, that claim has been waived.
D. Whether the Challenge Should Have Been Brought in the Court of Appeals
Finally, the trustee contends that his challenge may be brought under the APA, and need not have been brought as a petition for judicial review with the Court of Appeals.
Both the Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act provide as follows:
Any person or party aggrieved by an order issued by the [SEC] may obtain a review of such order in the United *297States court of appeals within any circuit wherein such [party] resides ... or in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, by filing in such court, within sixty days after the entry of such order, a written petition praying that the order of the [SEC] be modified or set aside in whole or in part.
15 U.S.C. §§ 80a-42(a) & 80b-13(a). Under those statutes, F-Squared should have filed a petition for review challenging the disgorgement order with either the First Circuit or the D.C. Circuit within sixty days after the order was entered. Because F-Squared entered into the settlement agreement on December 22, 2014, the deadline for filing such a petition expired on February 20, 2015. It is undisputed that no petition for review was ever filed.
When a statute provides for "a particular procedure and time period" for challenging agency actions, the APA does not provide an alternative mechanism for judicial review. See N.Y. Republican State Comm. v. SEC ,
The first question is to determine whether such intent is "fairly discernible in the statutory scheme."
The second question is to determine if the litigant's claims are "of the type Congress intended to be reviewed within [the] statutory structure." Thunder Basin ,
1. Meaningful Judicial Review
The availability of meaningful review has been characterized as the "most important" Thunder Basin factor. See Bebo , 799 F.3d at 774-75. The trustee here relies heavily on *298Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd. ,
The trustee similarly relies on Freytag v. Comm'r ,
2. "Wholly Collateral"
Next, the court must consider whether the trustee's claims are "wholly collateral" to the statutory scheme of the securities laws. That question is interrelated with the question of meaningful judicial review. See Free Enterprise Fund ,
The Supreme Court did not explain in Thunder Basin or its progeny how to determine whether a claim is "wholly collateral." However, the Elgin court suggested that a claim is not "wholly collateral if it serves as the 'vehicle by which' a party seeks to prevail in an administrative proceeding." Tilton ,
*299Bebo v. SEC ,
Here, the trustee's argument, at least arguably, is substantively "unrelated to the securities violations underlying the administrative proceeding." Tilton v. SEC ,
3. Agency Expertise
Finally, the court must determine whether the particular claims here fall within the SEC's expertise. That is a closer question-in Free Enterprise Fund , the Supreme Court held that petitioners' constitutional claims were "outside the [SEC's] competence and expertise."
Here, the trustee is substantively challenging the SEC's interpretation of "disgorgement" in the securities laws. Agencies routinely address such statutory claims. See Tilton ,
Again, F-Squared never presented the trustee's arguments to the SEC-instead, it voluntarily entered into a settlement agreement. Those arguments could then have been presented to the Court of Appeals in a petition for review more than three years ago. Allowing the trustee to circumvent the procedure explicitly set forth by Congress to challenge that settlement would undermine the finality and certainty of SEC orders. See N.Y. Republican State Comm. , 799 F.3d at 1136.
In short, the trustee's claims were subject to review within the SEC's exclusive statutory structure, and should have been raised with the Court of Appeals. The fact that this claim has been repackaged under the heading of an APA claim does not exempt it from the exclusive channeling regime Congress prescribed. See e.g., Jarkesy ,
4. The Applicability of 15 U.S.C. § 80b-13
Finally, during the motion hearing, counsel for the trustee cited excerpts from 15 U.S.C. § 80b-13 for the proposition that the Court of Appeals does not have exclusive jurisdiction of final SEC orders until a petition for review has been filed with that court.
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is GRANTED.
So Ordered.
An ETF typically owns shares of stock that closely track an underlying index. For example, the popular ETF SPDR tracks the S & P 500, a leading index that is based on the market capitalization of the 500 largest companies trading on the NYSE or NASDAQ. However, unlike mutual funds, ETFs are traded in the same manner as common stock on exchanges and are accordingly more liquid.
Sector rotation entails moving funds from one industry sector to another in an attempt to outperform the market.
"Back-testing" involves applying an investment strategy to past market conditions to show how the strategy could have performed had it been used then. However, because it does not portray actual performance, the SEC has restricted its use in advertising.
An investment of $100,000 in the S & P 500 on April 1, 2001, would have been worth $128,000 on August 24, 2008, a 28% increase. Using an accurately timed, but still back-tested, AlphaSector strategy, the investment would have been worth $138,000 on August 24, 2008, a 38% increase. Using the inaccurately timed and back-tested AlphaSector strategy, which was the one actually advertised, the investment would have been worth $235,000 on August 24, 2008, a 135% increase. (Compl. Ex. A ¶ 3).
A fund subadvisor is a third party hired by the fund adviser to help manage a portion of the investment portfolio.
Disgorgement has been defined as "[t]he act of giving up something (such as profits illegally obtained) on demand or by legal compulsion." Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014).
That statute provides: "Except as otherwise provided ... an action, suit or proceeding for the enforcement of any civil fine, penalty, or forfeiture ... shall not be entertained unless commenced within five years from the date when the claim first accrued...."
Disgorgement of profits would eliminate any gain by a violator, but presumably would be insufficient to compensate victims for the loss of their investments; that would normally require disgorgement of some or all of the gross proceeds.
Of course, F-Squared did not file such a petition because the matter had been settled-and it had expressly waived its right to judicial review. But as set forth below, meaningful judicial review was available had F-Squared elected to challenge the disgorgement order. It therefore had a full opportunity, had it chosen not to settle the case, to litigate the claims presented here.
The trustee bears the burden of establishing that the court has subject-matter jurisdiction. See Amoche v. Guar. Trust Life Ins. Co. ,
The trustee also relies on McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc. ,
Earlier, two other lower courts found that a claim was not wholly collateral to an administrative proceeding only if was substantively intertwined with the merits dispute that the proceeding was commenced to resolve. See Hill v. SEC ,
15 U.S.C. § 80b-13(a) provides as follows:
Any person or party aggrieved by an order issued by the [SEC] may obtain a review of such order in the United States court of appeals ... by filing in such court, within sixty days after the entry of such order, a written petition praying that the order of the [SEC] be modified or set aside in whole or in part.
A copy of such petition shall be forthwith transmitted by the clerk of the court to any member of the [SEC], or any officer thereof designated by the [SEC] for that purpose, and thereupon the [SEC] shall file in the court the record upon which the order complained of was entered, as provided in section 2112 of title 28. Upon the filing of such petition such court shall have jurisdiction, which upon the filing of the record shall be exclusive, to affirm, modify, or set aside such order, in whole or in part.
(emphasis added).
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Craig R. JALBERT, in his capacity as Trustee of the F2 Liquidating Trust, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated v. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published