Kramer Levin Files Amicus Brief for SIFMA and The Clearing House in the US Supreme Court

On January 18, 2016, Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, an association of hundreds of securities firms, banks and asset managers, and The Clearing House Association L.L.C., a nonpartisan advocacy organization that represents the interests of the world’s largest commercial banks which collectively hold more than half of all U.S. deposits and employ over one million people in the United States and more than two million worldwide. The brief supports a petition for a writ of certiorari by RBS Securities Inc., and Goldman, Sachs & Co. from a decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as Receiver for Guaranty Bank. The FDIC asserts claims under the Texas Securities Act (TSA) concerning Guaranty Bank’s purchases of mortgage-backed securities from the defendants. The Fifth Circuit construed a provision of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 that extends the “statute of limitations” for the FDIC to bring “contract” or “tort” claims to permit the FDIC to bring claims under the TSA after the expiry of its statute of repose.

The amicus brief argues that the Supreme Court should grant certiorari to determine whether the Fifth Circuit’s decision is inconsistent with a prior Supreme Court decision finding that similar language in the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 applied only to statutes of limitations, and not statutes of repose, and violates important federalism principles by overruling Texas’s decision to limit TSA causes of action through its statute of repose.

The case is FDIC v. RBS Securities Inc., et al., No. 15-783. The Kramer Levin team includes Litigation partner Michael J. Dell and special counsel Susan Jacquemot. Last year, Kramer Levin filed six briefs on behalf of SIFMA — three in the Second Circuit, two in the Fifth Circuit and one in the Ninth Circuit. The Clearing House joined three of these briefs and the American Bankers Association joined one.