Opinion ID: 723747
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: French Self Dealing

Text: 55 The complaint alleges numerous instances of improper conduct by the president of MultiServ's French subsidiary and accuses certain defendants of failing to disclose their knowledge of that misconduct. pp 57-68. The district court properly held that this portion of the complaint was deficient because Harsco's complaint failed to connect the alleged duty to disclose the French self-dealing with any representation from Section 2.04. The district court afforded Harsco an opportunity to fix its pleading. Harsco opted not to. 56 The pleading needed fixing because, again, we hold Harsco to the Agreement it negotiated and entered into. Under the circumstances of this case, no other representations means no other representations. 57 Ironically, in this instance there was a Section 2.04 representation which appears sufficiently inconsistent with the allegations of French impropriety to have allowed this claim to continue past the Rule 12(b)(6) stage. Section 2.04(i)(1) states that MultiServ was not in violation ... of any Law ... where failure to be in compliance would have a Material Adverse Effect. Harsco's general citation to Section 2.04 does not suffice to invoke this small subset of the fourteen pages contained therein. As discussed below, fraud must be pleaded with particularity. Fed.R.Civ.P. 9(b). That requirement is not met by citing to fourteen pages of representations when only a few lines among those fourteen pages consist of a representation which plaintiff claims to be deceitful. 58