Opinion ID: 780238
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: 1 This matter comes on before this court on an appeal from an order granting a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted entered in the district court on February 5, 2002. Plaintiff-appellant, Mark Levy, a shareholder in Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. (Fairchild), a nominal defendant-appellee not participating in this appeal, brought this shareholder derivative action on November 28, 2000, against defendants-appellees Sterling Holding Co. (Sterling) and National Semiconductor Corp. (National) after Fairchild declined to initiate a lawsuit seeking relief for the matters of which Levy complains. Levy by this action seeks a judgment requiring Sterling and National to disgorge what he alleges were short-swing insider trading profits of more than $72 million in Fairchild stock. Levy predicates the action on section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78p(b), which deprives specified insiders from profiting from certain offsetting purchase and sale securities transactions completed within less than a six-month period. The district court had jurisdiction under section 27 of the Exchange Act, 15 U.S.C. § 78aa, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We exercise plenary review on this appeal. See Gallo v. City of Philadelphia, 161 F.3d 217, 221 (3d Cir.1998).