Gerstle v. Gamble-Skogmo, Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 September 1971
• Docket Number: No. 64-C-1253.,64-C-1253.
• Citation: 332 F. Supp. 644
• Parties: Gustave GERSTLE et al., Plaintiffs, v. GAMBLE-SKOGMO, INC., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

332 F. Supp. 644

Gustave GERSTLE et al., Plaintiffs, v. GAMBLE-SKOGMO, INC., Defendant.

No. 64-C-1253.

United States District Court, E. D. New York.

September 24, 1971.

Emanuel Becker, New York City, for plaintiffs; Seymour S. Freeman, of counsel.

Lord, Bissell & Brook, Chicago, Ill., for defendant; Stephen A. Milwid, David M. Gooder, Steven C. Page, Chicago, Ill., of counsel.

Holtzman, Wise & Shepard co-attys., New York City, for defendant; James W. Deer, New York City, of counsel.

BARTELS, District Judge.

MEMORANDUM RE: HEARING HELD ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1971, REGARDING SPECIAL MASTER'S REPORT

On March 7, 1969, the court decided that Gamble-Skogmo, Inc. (Skogmo) was legally responsible to account and make restitution to the plaintiffs herein for damages suffered, arising out of a false and misleading proxy statement issued by Skogmo to secure the votes of the stockholders of General Outdoor Advertising Co., Inc. (General), in favor of a merger of General into Skogmo (298 F. Supp. 66 (E.D.N.Y.1969)). Pursuant to Rule 53, Fed.Rules Civ.Proc., 28 U.S.C.A., this court, on April 26, 1969, appointed Arthur H. Schwartz as Special Master to hear and report upon the accounting and the amount of restitution to be paid by Skogmo to the plaintiffs and those similarly situated. After many hearings at which testimony and evidence were taken concerning the sales by Skogmo of General's outdoor advertising plants in the United States, the value of the unlisted capital stock of Claude Neon Advertising Ltd. (Claude Neon), a Canadian corporation, approximately 96% of which was held by General, the value of the unlisted capital stock of Stedman Bros. Ltd. (Stedman), a Canadian corporation, 98% of which was held by General, and certain other items involving withdrawal of funds, expenses, income and taxes, the Special Master filed his report with the court. Both parties have filed numerous objections thereto and by briefs have raised substantial issues concerning the formula of valuation and in particular the valuation of Claude Neon and Stedman. After considering the full and complete report of the Special Master, consisting of 119 printed pages, in the light of all the objections raised to the ultimate result, the court has concluded that the formula of valuation and damages, as suggested in the terms of its original decree is, under the particular facts and circumstances of this case, impractical and speculative. Accordingly, the court, on its own motion, has adopted a new formula which it believes will more nearly provide a fair and adequate method of determining the amount of damages and restitution due to the plaintiffs and which will be hereafter explained.

Before doing so, it is appropriate that the court refer to two objections raised by the defendant, asserting that the original decree was defective in that it required a valuation (1) at the highest value of General's assets between the date of merger and the date of the final decree, and (2) of each and all of the assets of General at such highest value. Had it been possible to effectuate, with any degree of certainty or preciseness, the formula in the original decree, these objections would have been ignored under the well-known principle that the defendant by its conduct was estopped from raising such objections at this late hour. Cf. Moore v. United States, 217 F.Supp. 289, 304 (E.D.Pa.1963), affirmed, 332 F.2d 372 (3d Cir. 1964); Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 0.405(8); Restatement of the Law of Judgment § 1. In fact, as we shall see, the court was led to believe by counsel for both sides that there was no objection to the prescribed formula.

Plaintiffs submitted a proposed decree, to which the defendant made certain objections but did not object to that portion providing that the restitution of the assets to which the plaintiffs were entitled should be "the highest value between the date of the merger and the date of restitution." However, in its objections to plaintiffs' proposed form of decree, the defendant did state that restitution should be limited "to the highest value of such assets between the date of the October 17, 1963 merger and the date such assets were disposed of by Gamble-Skogmo, Inc., or the date when the final decree is entered herein by the Court after it approves the Master's report, whichever is earlier." Thus, in effect, both parties adopted the formula of valuing the unsold assets at their highest intermediate value between the date of the merger and the date of the final decree. Accordingly, the court signed a decree which provided that Skogmo should account or make restitution "of the value of each and all of the assets of General at the highest value of such assets between October 17, 1963, the date of the merger, and the date when the final decree is entered herein approving the Master's Report." Since all of General's outdoor advertising plants (United States assets) were sold shortly after the merger, no question is presented with respect to these properties.

After the Special Master had proceeded with his hearing for almost a year, the defendant belatedly took exceptions to that part of the decree which fixed the value of the assets at their highest value between the date of the merger and the date of approval of the Master's report, stating that the plaintiffs were entitled to accretions in the value of assets only for "a reasonable time" after the plaintiffs discovered the fraud. The Special Master decided to proceed under the form of the existing decree and to delay the presentation of arguments with respect thereto until the Master's report was before the court for final disposition. The validity of this objection will be best considered after discussion of defendant's second objection.

The second objection refers to another provision in the plaintiffs' proposed decree, which the defendant accepted without objection and which appeared in the final decree signed by the court. This provision provided that Skogmo should account and make restitution for the value "of each and all of the assets of General at the highest value of such assets." Only after the Special Master had proceeded to find the highest value of each of the assets, taken separately, and made his report, did the defendant object to the report on the ground that at most, it was liable to account for the combined highest value of all the assets rather than the highest value of each asset. For the following reasons, the court believes that this objection is well, although belatedly, taken:

Plaintiffs were deprived of the value of their General stock by defendant's fraud in inducing them to surrender the same under the terms of the merger agreement. The problem raised is what was the value of plaintiffs' stock of General. The court believes the value was that proportion of the collective value of General's assets which the amount of plaintiffs' stock bore to the number of outstanding shares of all of General's stock. This value, of course, includes the stock of Stedman and Claude Neon. In determining this value the plaintiffs, at best, are entitled to no more than their proportionate share of the highest value which the collection of all these assets reached at any one point in time during the period. Under the decree, the Master found that Claude Neon and Stedman had reached their highest value at different dates. The only theory which could justify this valuation is that, absent any fraud on the part of the defendant, General would have sold Claude Neon in the beginning of 1970, the date of its highest value, and Stedman in the fall of 1968, the date of its highest value. The court finds this assumption too untenable and speculative to support an award of damages.

To award the plaintiffs restitution with respect to Stedman and Claude Neon under such a theory would confer upon the plaintiffs an unwarranted benefit at the expense of the defendant. This is true because the highest value of the two different units, which occurred on different dates, might be far above the combined highest value of both units as determined on one specified date. However, to adopt the more theoretically acceptable approach of valuing the assets at their combined highest value on any particular date until the date of the final judgment would create almost insuperable practical problems when dealing with two different companies, in view of the numerous possible permutations and combinations of values.

Moreover, the task of reconstructing the combined highest value of the assets of the two companies is exacerbated by the fact that after the merger neither Stedman nor Claude Neon was permitted by Skogmo to conduct its business as an independent entity but, instead, each was operated as a coordinated cog in the overall Skogmo corporate machine. Of this the court was not aware at the time it entered the original decree. As appears from the Master's report, each company, and particularly Stedman, was subjected to numerous intercorporate charges, financial adjustments and substantial payouts. To arrive at a true valuation of the companies, the Master was compelled to attempt to unscramble some of the intermingling of the assets of these companies with other companies owned by Skogmo and in some cases to reverse certain transactions. Thus, the Master was constrained to undertake a hypothetical reconstruction of the natural financial development of each company, which consequently produced the basis for objections from both parties. Therefore, it became obvious from the report that a fair valuation of each of these companies, under the prescribed formula, was of necessity highly speculative and could hardly be a reliable indicator of the damage actually sustained by the plaintiffs. It should be emphasized, however, that the fact that the application of the original formula was made more difficult by the intermingling of assets by the defendant has no bearing upon the court's present...