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Civil Procedure Keyed to Field
Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders
Citation:
437 U.S. 340 (1978)Facts
Respondents purchased shares in Oppenheimer Fund during 1968 and 1969 and filed consolidated complaints alleging that petitioners violated federal securities laws by issuing misleading prospectuses and annual reports that failed to disclose the Fund’s investments in restricted securities, the associated risks, and valuation methods used. The complaints alleged that restricted securities were overvalued, artificially inflating the Fund’s net asset value and share prices. Respondents sought class certification under Rule 23(b)(3) for approximately 121,000 purchasers. The transfer agent’s records, from which class members could be identified, were maintained on paper and computer tapes. Compiling the list would require manual sorting, keypunching up to 300,000 computer cards, creating eight new computer programs, and would cost approximately $16,000. The District Court certified the class but rejected respondents’ proposal to redefine the class to include only current shareholders and ordered petitioners to bear the identification costs, reasoning that the expense was relatively modest and defendants had opposed the proposed redefinition.
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