Starr Int'l Co. v. United States, 11-779C

• Decision Date: 15 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 11-779C,11-779C
• Parties: STARR INTERNATIONAL COMPANY, INC., in its own right and on behalf of two classes of others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. THE UNITED STATES, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Claims Court

STARR INTERNATIONAL COMPANY, INC.,
in its own right and on behalf of two classes of others similarly situated, Plaintiff,
v.
THE UNITED STATES, Defendant.

No. 11-779C

United States Court of Federal Claims

June 15, 2015

Government's Financial Rescue and Takeover of American International Group (AIG); Fifth Amendment Taking and Illegal Exaction Claims; Shareholder Class Action; Demand for Corporate Equity and Voting Control as Consideration for Loan; Section 13(3), Federal Reserve Act; Effect of AIG Board's Approval of Terms; Damages; Economic Loss Analysis.

David Boies, with whom were Robert B. Silver, Robert J. Dwyer, Alanna C. Rutherford, Amy J. Mauser, Abby Dennis, Julia C. Hamilton, Laura Harris, Ilana Miller, John Nicolaou, Matthew R. Shahabian, David L. Simons, Craig Wenner, William Bloom, and James A. Kraehenbuehl, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, Armonk, New York, and John L. Gardiner, R. Ryan Stoll, and Gregory Bailey, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, New York City, New York, for Plaintiff.

Brian A. Mizoguchi, Assistant Director, with whom were Benjamin C. Mizer, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Robert E. Kirschman, Jr., Director, Kenneth M. Dintzer, Deputy Director, Scott D. Austin, Claudia Burke, and Joshua E. Gardner, Assistant Directors, John Roberson and John J. Todor, Senior Trial Counsel, Renee Gerber, Matthew F. Scarlato, Mariana T. Acevedo, David D'Alessandris, Vincent D. Phillips, and Zachary J. Sullivan, Trial Attorneys, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

WHEELER, Judge.

Plaintiff Starr International Company, Inc. ("Starr") commenced this lawsuit against the United States on November 21, 2011. Starr challenges the Government's financial rescue and takeover of American International Group, Inc. ("AIG") that began

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on September 16, 2008. Before the takeover, Starr was one of the largest shareholders of AIG common stock. Starr alleges in its own right and on behalf of other AIG shareholders that the Government's actions in acquiring control of AIG constituted a taking without just compensation and an illegal exaction, both in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The controlling shareholder of Starr is Maurice R. Greenberg, formerly AIG's Chief Executive Officer until 2005, and one of the key architects of AIG's international insurance business. Starr claims damages in excess of $40 billion.

On the weekend of September 13-14, 2008, known in the financial world as "Lehman Weekend" because of the impending failure of Lehman Brothers, U.S. Government officials feared that the nation's and the world's economies were on the brink of a monumental collapse even larger than the Great Depression of the 1930s. While the Government frantically kept abreast of economic indicators on all fronts, the leaders at the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the U.S. Treasury Department began focusing in particular on AIG's quickly deteriorating liquidity condition. AIG had grown to become a gigantic world insurance conglomerate, and its Financial Products Division was tied through transactions with most of the leading global financial institutions. The prognosis on Lehman Weekend was that AIG, without an immediate and massive cash infusion, would face bankruptcy by the following Tuesday, September 16, 2008. AIG's failure likely would have caused a rapid and catastrophic domino effect on a worldwide scale.

On that following Tuesday, after AIG and the Government had explored other possible avenues of assistance, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors formally approved a "term sheet" that would provide an $85 billion loan facility to AIG. This sizable loan would keep AIG afloat and avoid bankruptcy, but the punitive terms of the loan were unprecedented and triggered this lawsuit. Operating as a monopolistic lender of last resort, the Board of Governors imposed a 12 percent interest rate on AIG, much higher than the 3.25 to 3.5 percent interest rates offered to other troubled financial institutions such as Citibank and Morgan Stanley. Moreover, the Board of Governors imposed a draconian requirement to take 79.9 percent equity ownership in AIG as a condition of the loan. Although it is common in corporate lending for a borrower to post its assets as collateral for a loan, here, the 79.9 percent equity taking of AIG ownership was much different. More than just collateral, the Government would retain its ownership interest in AIG even after AIG had repaid the loan.

The term sheet approved by the Board of Governors contained other harsh terms. AIG's Chief Executive Officer, Robert Willumstad, would be forced to resign, and he would be replaced with a new CEO of the Government's choosing. The term sheet included other fees in addition to the 12 percent interest rate, such as a 2 percent

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commitment fee payable at closing, an 8 percent undrawn fee payable on the unused amount of the credit facility, and a 2.5 percent periodic commitment fee payable every three months after closing. Immediately after AIG began receiving financial aid from the Government on September 16, 2008, teams of personnel from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and its advisers from Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Davis Polk & Wardwell, descended upon AIG to oversee AIG's business operations. The Government's hand-picked CEO, Mr. Edward Liddy, assumed his position on September 18, 2008. Although the AIG Board of Directors approved the Government's harsh terms because the only other choice would have been bankruptcy, the Government usurped control of AIG without ever allowing a vote of AIG's common stock shareholders.

Out of this nationalization of AIG, Starr has identified two classes of common stock shareholders that were affected by the Government's actions: (1) a class comprised of AIG shareholders who held common stock during September 16-22, 2008 when the Government took 79.9 percent ownership of AIG in exchange for the $85 billion loan; and (2) a reverse stock split class comprised of AIG shareholders who held common stock on June 30, 2009 when the government-controlled board engineered a twenty-for-one reverse stock split to reduce the number of AIG's issued shares, but left the number of authorized shares the same. The Court formally certified these two classes of shareholders as plaintiffs on March 11, 2013. See Starr Int'l Co. v. United States, 109 Fed. Cl. 628 (2013). Under the Court's Rule 23 "opt in" procedure to join in a class action, 274,991 AIG shareholders have become class plaintiffs in this case.

The main issues in the case are: (1) whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York possessed the legal authority to acquire a borrower's equity when making a loan under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, 12 U.S.C. § 343 (2006); and (2) whether there could legally be a taking without just compensation of AIG's equity under the Fifth Amendment where AIG's Board of Directors voted on September 16, 2008 to accept the Government's proposed terms. If Starr prevails on either or both of these questions of liability, the Court must also determine what damages should be awarded to the plaintiff shareholders. Other subsidiary issues exist in varying degrees of importance, but the two issues stated above are the focus of the case.

The Court conducted a 37-day trial in Washington, D.C. spanning from September 29 through November 24, 2014. The Court heard the testimony of 36 witnesses, 21 for Plaintiff's case, and 15 for Defendant's case. Plaintiff's fact witnesses were, in the order presented: Scott Alvarez, Thomas Baxter, Patricia Mosser, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Alejandro LaTorre, Susan McLaughlin, Margaret McConnell, Sarah Dahlgren, Edward Liddy, Chester Feldberg, Douglas Foshee, Mark Symons, Kathleen Shannon, James Head, and Donald Farnan. Plaintiff's four expert witnesses were: Luigi Zingales, Paul Wazzan, S.P. Kothari, and Michael Cragg. Defendant's fact

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witnesses were, in the order presented: Andrew Colaninno, John Brandow, Marshall Huebner, Robert Willumstad, Brian Schreiber, Robert Reeder, David Herzog, James Lee, Peter Langerman, Morris Offit, and Howard Smith. Defendant's four expert witnesses were: Jonathan Neuberger, David Mordecai, Anthony Saunders, and Robert Daines. The Court also received the video deposition testimony of John Studzinski, a witness who lives abroad. The trial record consists of 8,812 transcript pages and more than 1,600 exhibits.¹

Certain waivers of the attorney-client privilege occurred during the course of the proceedings. In the discovery phase, due to the Government's assertion of a defense that the Federal Reserve Bank's taking of a borrower's equity under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act was legal, the Court ruled that any privileged communications among the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ("FRBNY"), and their counsel relating to the issue of legality must be produced. See Discovery Order No. 6, Nov. 6, 2013, at 2-3, Dkt. No. 182. During trial, the Court expanded this ruling to include the production of prior legal memoranda relied upon or relating to the propriety and legal limits of agency action under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. See Tr. 1950-55.² The Court made this ruling upon learning of the existence of an FRBNY "Doomsday Book" that contains guidance on the range of permissible government actions in a time of crisis. The Court required FRBNY to produce these additional documents during trial, and the FRBNY complied. See Boies, Tr. 3548 ("Treasury has now provided all documents, broadly defined, which concern the authority of the Federal Reserve or Treasury to acquire or hold equity in connection with a 13(3) loan.").

Other waivers of the attorney-client privilege resulted from Defendant's counsel calling two Davis Polk & Wardwell...