Kurke v. Oscar Gruss and Son, Inc.

• Decision Date: 18 July 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-7017.,05-7017.
• Citation: 454 F.3d 350
• Parties: David S. KURKE, Appellee v. OSCAR GRUSS AND SON, INC., Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

454 F.3d 350

David S. KURKE, Appellee v. OSCAR GRUSS AND SON, INC., Appellant.

No. 05-7017.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued November 18, 2005.

Decided July 18, 2006.

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Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 04cv00870).

Robert S. Churchill argued the cause for appellant/cross-appellee Oscar Gruss and Son, Inc. With him on the briefs was Lisa Freiman Fishberg. Barry Coburn entered an appearance.

Daniel M. Press argued the cause and filed the brief for appellee/cross-appellant Philip Wagenheim.

Richard A. Stephens argued the cause and filed the brief for appellee David S. Kurke.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, and GARLAND and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GARLAND.

GARLAND, Circuit Judge.

Oscar Gruss & Son, Inc., a securities firm, and Philip Wagenheim, an executive at the firm, appeal the district court's confirmation of an arbitration award. The arbitrators required the appellants to pay compensatory damages to David S. Kurke, a former Oscar Gruss customer, for subjecting his account to unauthorized trading and churning. The appellants maintain that the arbitrators awarded Kurke damages in manifest disregard of the law. We disagree.

I

David Kurke opened a securities account with Oscar Gruss in 1997. Upon opening the account, Kurke signed a margin agreement providing that "statements of my account shall be conclusive if not objected to in writing" within a specified period after transmittal. J.A. 396. Kurke invested a total of $520,000 in the account, and he received monthly statements. Kurke's account was profitable for the first two and a half years of its existence. Indeed, the statement for the month ending December 31, 1999, revealed a balance of approximately $1,007,000. By the time Kurke closed the account on April 30, 2000, however, the balance had dwindled to $39,000.

In January 2003, Kurke filed a National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (NASD) arbitration claim against the Oscar Gruss firm and Philip Wagenheim, alleging the following causes of actions: "unauthorized trading, churning, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, breach of contract, NASD Conduct Rule violations, negligence, negligent supervision, respondeat superior, and Securities Exchange Act violations." In re Arbitration Between David S. Kurke and Oscar Gruss & Sons, Inc., No. 03-00749, 2004 WL 1207231, at *1 (NASD May 21, 2004) (italicization omitted). Kurke sought $1,600,000 in compensatory damages and $2,000,000 in punitive damages. Oscar Gruss denied Kurke's allegations and asserted, inter alia, the affirmative defenses of ratification and failure to mitigate damages. Wagenheim also denied the allegations, and further contended that he could not be held liable for the conduct of Kurke's broker on a respondeat superior theory because he neither supervised the broker nor owned the company.

The arbitration panel heard testimony in April and May of 2004. Kurke testified that he and his wife were co-owners of a small executive search firm. Although he had fifteen years of investing experience, Kurke testified that he did not fully comprehend the account statements that came from Oscar Gruss. Some of the options trading information on Kurke's statements, he stated, "was way beyond what [he] could understand." Arbitration Hr'g Tr. at 702 (April 28, 2004). Kurke could, however, decipher the monthly statements well enough to notice that they revealed a high volume of unauthorized transactions during the fall of 1999; Kurke's broker had never sought, and Kurke had never granted, permission for discretionary trading.

Kurke began calling the broker, Christopher Fong, to complain about the unauthorized trades. Kurke testified that, during their conversation, Fong said "he absolutely could not rescind trades." Id. at 692. Kurke also testified that Fong told him:

[H]e couldn't undo buys because they were already there, and "there's nothing [he could] do with them except sell them at the right time." And he assured me they'd make money. . . . [H]e couldn't undo sales because they were no longer in the possession of the company. He couldn't put them back in my account.

Id. According to Kurke, Fong "kept promising me he'd fix it, to trust him, that he could . . . turn this around." Id. at 766.

Kurke further testified that he "tried calling [Fong's] manager," but that "nobody seemed to want to deal with it at all." Id. In April 2000, Kurke finally spoke with Wagenheim, who represented that he was Fong's superior and an owner of Oscar Gruss. See id. at 771-72. Like Fong, Wagenheim told Kurke "that none of the transactions could be undone." Id. at 769. Wagenheim also "kept reiterating, `You really should not . . . liquidate this stuff right now because it's going to come back,'" and "`I can see this account . . . tripling in no time.'" Id. at 782.

Geraldine Genco, an expert on securities industry standards, also appeared before the arbitration panel. She testified that, during October and November of 1999, Kurke's account had a turnover rate of over 65 — more than 10 times the industry standard for unlawful churning of an account. See id. at 1156-57 (April 30, 2004); see also Genco Aff. ¶ 3 (June 30, 2004).¹ Genco stated that this was "one of the highest excessive trading cases" she had ever seen. Genco Aff. ¶ 3. She further opined that there was unauthorized trading and that "the lack of supervision over Mr. Kurke's account was `intentional' and `reckless.'" Id. ¶ 4.²

On May 21, 2004, the arbitration panel awarded Kurke compensatory damages from both Oscar Gruss and Wagenheim. See Arbitration, 2004 WL 1207231, at *2. The panel ordered Oscar Gruss to pay Kurke $648,000, plus five percent interest from May 1, 2000, until the amount was paid in full. The arbitrators ordered Wagenheim to pay Kurke $58,000 at the same rate of interest. Kurke's claims for punitive damages and attorneys' fees, however, were denied.

On May 28, 2004, Kurke petitioned the district court for enforcement of the arbitration award; the defendants subsequently filed cross-motions to vacate it. On January 19, 2005, the district court granted Kurke's petition and entered judgment against the defendants for the full amount of the award. See Kurke v. Oscar Gruss & Son, Inc., No. 04-0870, Mem. Op. at 11 (D.D.C. Jan. 19, 2005). This appeal followed.

II

As we have repeatedly recognized, "`judicial review of arbitral awards is extremely limited,'" and we "`do not sit to hear claims of factual or legal error by an arbitrator as [we would] in reviewing decisions of lower courts.'" Teamsters Local Union No. 61 v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 272 F.3d 600, 604 (D.C.Cir.2001) (quoting Kanuth v. Prescott, Ball & Turben, Inc., 949 F.2d 1175, 1178 (D.C.Cir.1991)). The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. § 10(a), lists only four grounds upon which an arbitration award may be vacated.³ Neither Oscar Gruss nor Wagenheim contends that any of those grounds is applicable here.

In addition to the statutory grounds, "arbitration awards can be vacated. . . if they are in manifest disregard of the law." LaPrade v. Kidder, Peabody & Co., Inc., 246 F.3d 702, 706 (D.C.Cir.2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). This is the ground upon which the appellants urge us to vacate Kurke's award. See Appellant Oscar Gruss Br. 3; Appellant Wagenheim Br. 5.⁴ "Manifest disregard," however, is an extremely narrow standard of review. It "means much more than failure to apply the correct law." Kanuth, 949 F.2d at 1182.⁵ Rather, to vacate an award under that standard, we "`must find that (1) the arbitrators knew of a governing legal principle yet refused to apply it or ignored it altogether[,] and (2) the law ignored by the arbitrators was well defined, explicit, and clearly applicable to the case.'" LaPrade, 246 F.3d at 706 (quoting DiRussa v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 121 F.3d 818, 821 (2d Cir.1997)).

Moreover, when the arbitrators give no explanation for their decision, as commonly occurs in arbitration and as occurred in this case, we must confirm the award "if any justification can be gleaned from the record." GMS Group, LLC v. Benderson, 326 F.3d 75, 78 (2d Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). "Even where explanation for an award is deficient or non-existent, we will confirm it if a justifiable ground for the decision can be inferred from the facts of the case." Duferco Int'l Steel Trading v. T. Klaveness Shipping A/S, 333 F.3d 383, 390 (2d Cir. 2003). In light of this "severely limited" standard of review, it should come as no surprise that "obtaining judicial relief for arbitrators' manifest disregard of the law is rare." Id. at 389 (internal quotation marks omitted).

We review a district court's confirmation of an arbitration award for clear error with respect to questions of fact and de novo with respect to questions of law. See LaPrade, 246 F.3d at 706; see also First Options of Chi., Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 947-48, 115 S.Ct. 1920, 131 L.Ed.2d 985 (1995). As the parties seeking to vacate the award, Oscar Gruss and Wagenheim "bear[] the burden of demonstrating that the arbitration panel acted in manifest disregard of the law." LaPrade, 246 F.3d at 706. We consider Oscar Gruss' arguments in Part III and Wagenheim's in Part IV.

III

For purposes of this appeal, Oscar Gruss does not dispute that Kurke's account "was churned," that "unauthorized trades occurred" in the account, or that Oscar Gruss and its employees "acted wrongfully." Appellant Oscar Gruss Br. 4. It nonetheless contends that Kurke is barred from recovering the arbitrators' award "as a matter of law." Id.

Oscar Gruss proffers two arguments in support of its claim that the arbitration panel's award to Kurke was made in manifest disregard of the law. First, the company contends that, under the terms of his margin agreement, Kurke's failure to object to the unauthorized...