On October 5, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had denied the defendants’ petition for a writ of certiorari in the shareholder class action originally brought in  August 2008 by Northstar Financial Advisors, Inc., on behalf of its clients, against Schwab Investments, a Massachusetts business trust, the board of trustees of Schwab Investments and Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. (CSIM). In denying the defendants’ petition, the Supreme Court declined to review the earlier decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case, effectively allowing the Ninth Circuit’s decision to stand. 

The following is a summary of the litigation to date:

In August 2008, Northstar Financial Advisors, Inc. filed a shareholder class action lawsuit setting forth a number of claims based on allegations that the Schwab Total Return Bond Fund, a series of Schwab Investments for which CSIM serves as investment adviser, deviated from its fundamental investment policies. Specifically, between September 2007 and February 2009, the Fund is alleged to have (1) deviated from its fundamental investment objective to track the Lehman Brothers U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, the Fund’s benchmark, by investing in non-U.S. agency collateralized mortgage obligations that were not included in the Index, and (2) invested in non-agency mortgage-backed securities and collateralized mortgage obligations in excess of fundamental investment policies prohibiting the Fund from investing more than 25% of its total assets in any industry and investing more than 25% of its total assets in U.S. agency and non-agency mortgage-backed securities and CMOs. As a result of these investments, the Fund significantly underperformed its benchmark during the relevant period. 

The plaintiffs’ initial complaint asserted a number of claims relating to this activity, including: a violation of Section 13(a) of the 1940 Act, which prohibits a fund from, among other things, deviating from a fundamental investment policy without shareholder approval; a breach of fiduciary duty by the Fund’s board of trustees relating to a denial of voting rights; a breach of a purported contract between Fund shareholders and Schwab Investments created when shareholders voted in 1997 to change the Fund’s fundamental investment policies to those alleged to have been violated; and a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The defendants initially moved to dismiss the suit, claiming that Northstar, the lead plaintiff, had no standing to sue because it never itself invested in the Fund, and that there is no private right of action under Section 13(a). The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California agreed that Northstar had no standing to sue but allowed a shareholder’s claim to be assigned to Northstar to cure the deficiency. While the District Court initially ruled against the defendants on the Section 13(a) claim, the defendants ultimately prevailed on appeal, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that there was no private right of action under that section.

In September 2010, the plaintiffs amended their complaint to re move the Section 13(a) claim and add a claim for breach of the investment advisory contract between Schwab Investments and CSIM, which required CSIM to manage the Fund in accordance with the Fund’s fundamental investment objectives and policies, on a theory that plaintiffs were third-party beneficiaries of the contract. The defendants again moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that all of the plaintiffs’ claims should be precluded by the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA), which prohibits class actions brought by more than 50 plaintiffs if the action is based on state law claims and alleges either a material misrepresentation or omission or the use of manipulation or deception in connection with the purchase or sale of a security. On this point, the District Court agreed that all of the plaintiffs’ claims, with the exception of the fiduciary duty claim to the extent it was based purely on Massachusetts law, should be precluded by SLUSA because such claims all related essentially to misrepresentations by the defendants, in the Fund’s prospectuses and other documents, relating to how the Fund would be managed. The District Court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the breach of contract and implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims, determining that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the 1997 proxy vote created a contract between Schwab Investments and Fund shareholders. The District Court also determined that the harm from the purported breach of fiduciary duty affected all shareholders equally and therefore was properly viewed as being inflicted on the Fund; accordingly, the District Court determined that the claim must be brought in a derivative suit rather than individually by Fund shareholders. The District Court granted the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint to re-assert the fiduciary duty claim in a manner so as not to be derivative or to implicate SLUSA. Finally, while the District Court was not fully persuaded by the defendants’ arguments that Fund shareholders were not third-party beneficiaries of the investment advisory contract, the District Court noted that this claim, as previously presented, was precluded by SLUSA. The District Court granted the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint to re-assert the third-party beneficiary claim in a manner that did not trigger SLUSA preclusion.

In March 2011, the plaintiffs filed another amended complaint, which contained revised breach of fiduciary duty claims against Schwab Investments’ board of trustees and CSIM as well as updated breach of contract claims against CSIM under the third-party beneficiary theory. The defendants again moved to dismiss all claims. The District Court was not persuaded by the plaintiffs’ additional pleading on the fiduciary duty claims and dismissed with prejudice all of the claims, determining that such claims failed to allege a breach of duty owed directly to shareholders, and that these claims would need to be brought derivatively. The District Court also dismissed the third-party beneficiary claims with prejudice, having not been persuaded by additional pleading that shareholders should be considered third-party beneficiaries of an investment advisory contract under California law. 

The plaintiffs thereafter appealed a number of the claims previously dismissed by the District Court, including the breach of contract claim relating to the 1997 proxy vote, the fiduciary duty claims and the third-party beneficiary claim relating to the Fund’s investment advisory contract. On March 9, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the prior dismissal of these claims and remanded the case for further deliberation. In reversing the prior dismissal of the breach of contract claim relating to the 1997 proxy vote, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “the mailing of the proxy statement and the adoption of the two fundamental investment policies after the shareholders voted to approve them, and the annual representations by the Fund that it would follow these policies are sufficient to form a contract between the shareholders on the one hand and [Schwab Investments] on the other.” The Ninth Circuit concluded that the Fund offered investors the right to invest on the terms set forth in its proxy statement and prospectuses, that shareholders accepted the offer by so investing, that the investment or continued investment by shareholders was the consideration and that the parties’ object was lawful, thereby satisfying the requirements for a contract.

The Ninth Circuit also vacated the prior dismissal of the plaintiffs’ fiduciary duty claims, disagreeing with the District Court’s determination that the plaintiffs “failed to successfully allege a breach of any duty owed directly to Fund investors.” The Ninth Circuit pointed to the Fund’s declaration of trust, which states that “the Trustees hereby declare that they will hold all cash, securities and other assets, which they may from time to time acquire as Trustees hereunder IN TRUST to manage and dispose of the same . . 
. for the pro rata benefit of the holders from time to time of Shares of the Trust.” In addition, citing cases under Massachusetts law and various secondary sources, the Ninth Circuit determined that trustees of a Massachusetts business trust owe a fiduciary relationship to all trust shareholders, and that “there is no logical basis for the argument that the trustees of a mutual fund organized as a Massachusetts business trust owe a fiduciary duty to the trust, rather than the shareholders, and that for this reason they are limited to a derivative action on behalf of the trust.” The Ninth Circuit further identified general differences between when a derivative action should be required in the case of an operating corporation, where share prices rise and fall as a by-product of business success and share price declines may result from either unsuccessful decisions or fiduciary misconduct, and in the case of a mutual fund, where there is no business other than investing and any decrease in share price flows directly and immediately to shareholders, which would especially be true when such a decrease results from the violation of a fundamental investment policy.

Finally, the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision below to dismiss the third-party beneficiary claim relating to the Fund’s investment advisory contract, concluding that plaintiffs adequately alleged that the investment advisory contract was entered into with the intention to benefit Fund shareholders. Among other things, the Ninth Circuit cited as evidence that shareholders should be considered thirdparty beneficiaries of the investment advisory contract the requirement of the 1940 Act that investment advisory contracts be approved by fund shareholders. 

The Ninth Circuit declined to address the effect of SLUSA on the various common law causes of action in the case and remanded the case to the District Court to determine the applicability of SLUSA to the plaintiffs’ various claims. As noted, following the issuance of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in March, the defendants immediately petitioned for a rehearing. On April 28, 2015, in a two-to-one decision, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit rejected the defendants’ petition for a rehearing. On July 27, 2015, the defendants filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting that the Supreme Court review certain of the Ninth Circuit’s holdings. Specifically, the defendants requested that the Supreme Court review the Ninth Circuit’s holding that Northstar could cure its lack of standing after the date of the original pleading by having a shareholder assign to Northstar its claim. The defendants argued that this ruling directly conflicted with decisions of at least two other U.S. circuit courts of appeals, was contrary to Supreme Court jurisprudence establishing that standing must exist at the time a complaint is filed, presented “a vitally important question” and caused confusion among lower courts. The defendants also requested that the Supreme Court review the Ninth Circuit’s holding that disclosures in documents filed with the SEC create contracts that can be enforced through common law breach-of-contract claims. The defendants argued that this ruling was unworkable, misconstrued and improperly sidestepped the federal securities laws, created a means to penalize mutual funds for compliance with the federal securities laws, impaired the uniform regulation of nationally traded securities in conflict with federal law and established an unprecedented theory that is inconsistent with previous decisions of the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

The plaintiffs filed a brief in opposition on August 26, 2015. On August 28, 2015, the Investment Company Institute (ICI) and the Independent Directors Council (IDC) filed a joint amicus brief supporting the defendants’ petition, arguing that granting certiorari in this case was warranted because of the “immediate and far-reaching threat to mutual funds and their investors” presented by the Ninth Circuit’s decision. The ICI and IDC further argued that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that SEC disclosures may create enforceable contracts improperly turns a federally mandated disclosure document into a privately enforceable contract in a manner that conflicts with the comprehensive federal regulatory framework applicable to mutual funds. Also on August 28, 2015, a second amicus brief in support of the defendants was filed by the Mutual Fund Directors Forum, and a third amicus brief in support of the defendants was filed jointly by Pacific Life Fund Advisors, LLC, Capital Research and Management Co., AssetMark Inc., Wells Fargo Fund Management, LLC and Russell Investments. As stated above, on October 5, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had denied the defendants’ petition for a writ of certiorari.