Ahn v. Rooney, Pace Inc.

• Decision Date: 19 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. 85 Civ. 3424 (CBM).,85 Civ. 3424 (CBM).
• Citation: 624 F. Supp. 368
• Parties: KYUNG SUP AHN, M.C., P.C. Retirement Trust Pension: and Kyung Sup Ahn, as guardian for Anthony Ahn, a minor child, Plaintiffs, v. ROONEY, PACE INC., and Robert Edelstein, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

624 F. Supp. 368

KYUNG SUP AHN, M.C., P.C. Retirement Trust Pension: and Kyung Sup Ahn, as guardian for Anthony Ahn, a minor child, Plaintiffs, v. ROONEY, PACE INC., and Robert Edelstein, Defendants.

No. 85 Civ. 3424 (CBM).

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

December 19, 1985.

Haas, Greenstein, Hauser, Sims, Cohen & Gerstein, P.C. by Randall T. Sims, New York City, for plaintiffs.

Regina Felton, New York City, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

MOTLEY, Chief Judge.

In this action alleging securities fraud under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, and also common law fraud, defendants have moved for a stay pending arbitration. Plaintiff has cross-moved for a determination that there is no basis for arbitration of plaintiffs' claims and for an order declaring defendant's arbitration demand invalid and a nullity. For the reasons that follow, defendants' motion to stay pending arbitration is denied, and correspondingly, plaintiffs' motion is granted.

Facts

In 1980 plaintiff Kyung Sup Ahn, an individual wishing to set up a retirement account as well as a Uniform Gifts to Minors ("UGMA") fund for his minor son, established the two securities accounts at issue in this case. Defendant Rooney, Pace, Inc. ("Rooney, Pace") was the securities broker for these accounts, and defendant Robert Edelstein, an employee and registered representative of Rooney, Pace, the individual principally responsible for managing them. As the entity handling the substantive management of these accounts, Rooney, Pace is known as the "introducing broker."

It is customary in the case of smaller brokers such as Rooney, Pace, for another entity, called the "clearing broker," to perform the mechanical, record-keeping functions relating to the clearance and settlement of various transactions in the customer accounts. In the case of plaintiffs' accounts with Rooney, Pace, it was Bear Stearns, a large investment brokerage firm, that acted as clearing broker.

When plaintiffs began their accounts with Rooney Pace, they also signed a standard, printed agreement with Bear Stearns regarding the latters' obligations as clearing broker. This agreement includes an arbitration clause covering "any controversy arising out of or relating to a customer's cash and/or margin accounts," and also providing that all such arbitration shall be in accordance with the rules of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. or of the New York or American Stock Exchanges (which themselves mandate arbitration of certain member disputes). The arbitration clause of the Bear Stearns customer agreement expressly states, however, that it is not intended to "constitute a waiver of the right to a judicial forum where such waiver would be void under the securities laws and specifically does not prohibit the customer from pursuing any claim or claims arising under the federal securities laws in any court of competent jurisdiction."

This Bear Stearns customer agreement document never expressly mentions Rooney, Pace. Defendant is, however, unambiguously referred to in that paragraph of the agreement pertaining to situations where Bear Stearns' relationship with the customer is that of clearing broker only. In this section Bear Stearns expressly disavows liability or responsibility for any acts or admissions of the introducing broker or its employees.

Discussion:

It is basic that there is no duty to arbitrate a particular dispute where there has been no agreement between the parties requiring such disputes to be submitted to arbitration. See United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 582, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1352, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960). Whether a party has or has not agreed to arbitrate is determined on the basis of ordinary contract principles, Fox v. Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., 453 F.Supp. 561, 564 (S.D.N.Y.1978), and it is the district court which must decide this question. United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., supra. Because this court finds that defendant Rooney, Pace has failed to demonstrate the existence of any agreement between it and plaintiffs that mandates arbitration of the present dispute, defendants' motion to stay pending arbitration clearly must fail.

In support of the contention that plaintiffs' claims against Rooney, Pace and its employee, Robert Edelstein, must be submitted to arbitration, defendants rely solely on the signed agreements between plaintiffs and Bear Stearns, the clearing broker for plaintiffs' accounts. Yet while the Bear Stearns customer agreements invoked by defendants indisputably do require arbitration in the case of disputes concerning "cash and/or margin accounts," it appears equally beyond dispute that defendant Rooney, Pace is not a party to these agreements. Rooney, Pace, however, has not attempted to argue that it actually is a party to the agreement either by explicit or implicit mention. Nor has defendant attempted to demonstrate that the Bear Stearns agreement or at least its arbitration clause has somehow been incorporated into an independent agreement between plaintiffs and itself. See Massey Coal Export Corp. v. Compania Comercial y Naviera San Martin, S.A., 535 F.Supp. 1315 (S.D.N.Y.1982) (Weinfeld, J.) (shipper may not rely on arbitration clause in its charter party agreement with shipowner to enforce arbitration of dispute with buyer where contract with buyer does not incorporate terms of the charter party agreement).

Defendants appear to argue, rather, that because of Bear Stearns' quite essential role as clearing broker in servicing plaintiffs' accounts and also because plaintiffs apparently received the printed Bear Stearns customer agreement forms from the hands of Rooney, Pace employees, a third party beneficiary or an agency analysis should apply. Accordingly, under either analysis the argument would go, Rooney, Pace, as introducing broker is entitled to enforce the terms of the contract entered into between plaintiffs and Bears Stearns.

The relationship between introducing broker and clearing broker, it should be noted, has been deemed by some courts to constitute an agency/principal relationship, see Okcuoglu v. Hess, Grant & Co., Inc., 580 F.Supp. 749 (E.D.Pa.1984), or alternatively, a third party beneficiary relationship. See Cauble v. Mabon Nugent & Co., 594 F.Supp. 985 (S.D.N.Y.1984). Thus, in these cases, introducing brokers have successfully invoked the terms of the customer/clearing broker agreement in disputes arising between the customer and the introducing brokers themselves. Both Okcuoglu and Cauble are arguably distinguishable from the case now before the court by virtue of the particular types of brokerage transactions at issue. Yet even were such a distinction unavailable, this court would find itself constrained to differ with their...