Windy City Metal Fabricators v. Cit Technical

Decision Date01 August 2008
Docket NumberNo. 07-1567.,07-1567.
PartiesWINDY CITY METAL FABRICATORS & SUPPLY, INCORPORATED and Midwest Ink Company, on Behalf of Itself and All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CIT TECHNOLOGY FINANCING SERVICES, INCORPORATED and Reed Smith, a New Jersey Limited Partnership, Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Trucco (argued), Stamos & Trucco, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Windy City Metal Fabricators & Supply Inc. ("Windy City") sued CIT Technology Financing Services ("CIT") and the law firm Reed Smith in Illinois state court. After Reed Smith removed the action to the district court based on diversity of citizenship,1 Midwest Ink Co. was added as a plaintiff. CIT and Reed Smith filed a motion to dismiss, which the district court granted. The plaintiffs timely appealed the dismissal.2 For the reasons stated in this opinion, we affirm in part and reverse in part the judgment of the district court. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I BACKGROUND
A.

Because this case comes to us after the district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, we take as true the facts alleged in the complaint. Tamayo v. Blagojevich, 526 F.3d 1074, 1081 (7th Cir. 2008). The events at issue in this appeal came about as a result of the activities of Norvergence, a now-bankrupt company. When still in business, Norvergence leased to business customers a telecommunications service package called the Matrix Solution. The package included the customer's communication service and hardware that could be leased only from Norvergence through an equipment rental agreement. Norvergence claimed that the equipment contained proprietary components that reduced a user's telecommunications bill; in fact, the equipment had no effect on the customer's telecommunications services. In some instances, Norvergence did not even connect the devices.

After Norvergence entered into an equipment rental agreement with a customer, it assigned that agreement to one of a number of third parties. The customer received standard telecommunications equipment that actually was worth only a small fraction of the customer's monthly payment on the equipment rental agreement. Norvergence used the funds, which it obtained by selling the equipment rental agreement to the third party, to pay the customer's telecommunications services bill. Norvergence was unable, however, to continue to pay its customers' bills because it paid more for the monthly services than it obtained by selling the rental agreements. Norvergence went bankrupt. Its customers were left without telecommunications service, but they had continuing obligations under the equipment rental agreement to pay the third-party assignee for the equipment.

Windy City and Midwest Ink are two businesses that purchased these equipment rental agreements from Norvergence. Norvergence sold their rental agreements to CIT. When Norvergence later went bankrupt, Windy City and Midwest Ink stopped receiving telecommunications services because Norvergence was no longer paying for the services. Windy City and Midwest Ink nevertheless had a continuing obligation under the assigned equipment rental agreement to lease equipment from CIT.

The Illinois Attorney General obtained a default judgment against Norvergence in an Illinois court. Under that judgment, the contracts between Norvergence and its Illinois consumers were held to have been void ab initio because they stemmed from solicitations that were the result of unfair business practices and fraud on the part of Norvergence. Reed Smith, acting on behalf of CIT, then executed an Assurance of Voluntary Discontinuance (the "Assurance") with the Illinois Attorney General. Under its terms, CIT offered to reduce by eighty-five percent the amount that each customer owed to CIT on its rental agreement and to refund sixty-seven percent of the insurance-related charges paid by the customer on the rental agreements.

As required by the Assurance, CIT sent a settlement letter directly to each of its lessees, including Windy City and Midwest Ink. Shortly thereafter, Reed Smith also sent a letter to Windy City's attorneys in order to ensure that they were aware of the letter. Midwest Ink accepted the settlement offer, but Windy City did not accept it.

B.

In 2005, Windy City filed its original proposed class action complaint against CIT in Illinois state court. It sought to represent Norvergence customers whose rental agreements had been assigned to CIT. Reed Smith was added as a defendant in the fall of 2005, and it removed the action to the district court. Midwest Ink was added subsequently as a plaintiff to represent the potential class members who had accepted CIT's settlement offer. The revised second amended complaint, the operative version on this appeal, set forth eight counts, including claims of common-law fraud and violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, 815 ILCS 505/1 et seq. ("Consumer Fraud Act"). The complaint sought compensatory, statutory and punitive damages, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, against both CIT and Reed Smith.

The district court dismissed the complaint with prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to plead fraud with the specificity required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b). The plaintiffs moved for leave to further amend the complaint, but the district court denied their motion. The plaintiffs timely appealed.

II DISCUSSION

We review de novo a district court's grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Tamayo, 526 F.3d at 1081. As a general rule, in testing the sufficiency of a complaint, notice pleading remains the standard. A plaintiff's complaint need only provide a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief" that is also sufficient to provide the defendant with "fair notice" of the claim and its basis. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1964, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007); Fed. R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). In order to demonstrate that he is entitled to relief, however, the pleader must show through his allegations that "it is plausible, rather than merely speculative, that he is entitled to relief." Tamayo, 526 F.3d at 1083 (quotation omitted); see also Bell Atl., 127 S.Ct. at 1965-66. A complaint must do more than merely "avoid foreclosing possible bases for relief." Tamayo, 526 F.3d at 1084 (quotation omitted). It "must actually suggest that the plaintiff has a right to relief, by providing allegations that raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. (quotation omitted).

In the present case, the plaintiffs' complaint includes claims against CIT and Reed Smith that allege common-law fraud and violations of the Consumer Fraud Act. The parties agree that, with respect to most of these claims, the heightened pleading standards of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) govern. Under Rule 9(b), a plaintiff must state with particularity "all averments of fraud or mistake." Fed. R.Civ.P. 9(b); see also Gen. Elec. Capital Corp. v. Lease Resolution Corp., 128 F.3d 1074, 1078 (7th Cir.1997). The circumstances of fraud or mistake include "the identity of the person who made the misrepresentation, the time, place and content of the misrepresentation, and the method by which the misrepresentation was communicated to the plaintiff." Gen. Elec. Capital, 128 F.3d at 1078 (quotation omitted); see also DiLeo v. Ernst & Young, 901 F.2d 624, 627 (7th Cir.1990) (describing Rule 9(b) particularity as "the who, what, when, where, and how: the first paragraph of any newspaper story").

The plaintiffs believe that the district court erred in dismissing their common law fraud claims against CIT and Reed Smith for failure to state with particularity the circumstances of the alleged fraud. They also submit that their claims against CIT under the Consumer Fraud Act may go forward without meeting the particularity requirement of Rule 9(b).3 We now address each of these contentions.

A. Fraud Claims

The district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs' claims against CIT and Reed Smith on the ground that the claims sounded in fraud but failed to meet the particularity requirement of Rule 9(b). The court ruled that, although the complaint described Norvergence's fraud with particularity, it failed to describe CIT's connection to any fraud with the particularity required by Rule 9(b). The court also held that the plaintiffs had failed to state with particularity the fraud allegedly committed by Reed Smith. The district court therefore dismissed all the fraud claims against CIT and Reed Smith because the plaintiffs had failed to plead who had made a fraudulent statement, when the fraudulent statement was made and how the fraudulent statement was communicated.

On appeal, the plaintiffs' only contention is that the district court wrongly required them to provide evidence of fraud to defeat a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. They correctly point out that the district court employed the word "evidence" when describing the allegations that the complaint failed to state with particularity. For instance, the district court said that "[n]o evidence ... [was] offered to establish who at CIT knew that the assigned [equipment rental agreement] was for a bundled service and equipment lease agreement, or name the individuals who should have known, when they should have known, or how they would have known." Windy City Metal Fabricators & Supply, Inc. v. CIT Tech. Fin. Servs., Inc., No. 05 C 5451, 2007 WL 495276, at *4 (N.D.Ill. ...

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