Court Opinion

ID: 9464784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:42:24.679103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:48.907755
License: Public Domain

JAMES M. CARTER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I am disturbed by the fact that the majority sends this case back for evidentiary hearings to a busy district court (the Northern District of California at San Francisco) apparently to find specifically the extent of each individual defendant’s bad conduct and what his responsibility was in the overall picture. An evidentiary hearing to ascertain the various misdeeds and responsibility of each defendant in connection therewith could well require months of a district court’s time. The same issues are present in civil actions pending against these defendants. In some way extensive evidentiary hearings in this case ought to be avoidable on remand to the district court.
The record shows that the individual defendants made admissions that violations occurred, but did not take any responsibility for particular violations (see majority opinion, supra, 575 F.2d 699). In view of the pending civil suits against these defendants it is understandable that they are unwilling to make further admissions as to their complicity in the overall scheme. However, perhaps they could make more specific admissions for the purpose of this motion only. Or perhaps the district judge on his own could explicitly assume that the charges by the S.E.C. against each defendant were proven. I think that if the individual defendants admitted for the purposes of this motion only, or if the district judge assumed as proven, the specific charges as set forth in the majority opinion (575 F.2d 696), then there would no longer be a genuine issue as to any material fact. Summary judgment could then be entered without need of a long evidentiary hearing.