Opinion ID: 3011682
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Class Definition

Text: The class definition begins: [A]ll persons and entities who purchased or acquired stock. Appellants received their shares through the DAI/CUC merger . This Court has defined purchasers of stock to include those who buy on an open market and those who exchange stock in one company for stock in another company pursuant to a merger between the two companies or an acquisition of one company by the other. See In re Penn Cent. Sec. Litig., 494 F.2d 528, 533 (3d Cir. 1974) (citing SEC v. Nat'l Sec. Inc., 393 U.S. 453, 467 (1969)). By virtue of the DAI/CUC merger, Appellants purchased stock. The class definition then requires that the purchaser or acquirer obtained Cendant . . . or CUC . . . publicly traded securities. As a result of the DAI/CUC mer ger Appellants received a total of 32,505,099 shares of CUC stock. The question that we must address is whether that stock was publicly traded so as to fall within the class definition. Appellants argue the District Court err ed in holding that their shares were publicly traded securities because the Court did not give the term publicly traded its commonlyused definition. They assert that publicly traded means _________________________________________________________________ 15. Appellants' attempt to distinguish Fine Paper by relying on Pittsburgh Terminal Corp. v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co., 824 F.2d 249, 254 (3d Cir. 1987), is unfounded as the Pittsburgh T erminal court itself distinguished its case from Fine Paper as well as the current situation. Pittsburgh Terminal did not involve a court interpreting its own order, but instead dealt with the court interpreting a stipulation by the parties. There is no basis for extending this principle [of particular deference articulated in Fine Paper] to demand similar deference in the present case to the district court's interpretation of a stipulation underlying a previous