Supreme Court to rule on statute of limitations in class actions News
Supreme Court to rule on statute of limitations in class actions
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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] granted certiorari [order list, PDF] Monday in Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi v. IndyMac MBS, Inc. [docket; cert. petition, PDF] to rule on the statute of limitations in class action suits. In American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah (1974) [opinion] the court held that “the commencement of a class action suspends the applicable statute of limitations as to all asserted members of the class who would have been parties had the suit been permitted to continue as a class action.” Section 13 of the Securities Act of 1933 [text, PDF] provides that “[i]n no event shall” an action under § 11 of that Act “be brought … more than three years after the security was bona fide offered to the public, or under [§ 12](a)(2) … more than three years after the sale.” The question presented is: “Does the filing of a putative class action serve, under the American Pipe rule, to satisfy the three-year time limitation in § 13 of the Securities Act with respect to the claims of putative class members?” The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held [opinion] that “American Pipe’s tolling rule does not apply to the three-year statute of repose in Section 13.”