Wilson v. PNC Bank National Association

KURT EDWARD WILSON, as the Executor of the Estate of Roscoe C. Wilson, Plaintiff, v. PNC BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, Defendant.

No. 21-1131 (RMB/AMD)

United States District Court, D. New Jersey

July 28, 2021

Robert Matthew Rosenberg Ted M. Rosenberg Law Office of Ted M Rosenberg, Esq. On behalf of Plaintiff

Greyson Kyle Van Dyke Reed Smith LLP On behalf of Defendant

OPINION

RENÉE MARIE BUMB, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court upon the Motion to Dismiss filed by Defendant PNC Bank National Association (“PNC Bank” or “Defendant”). [Docket No. 16.] Defendant's Motion seeks dismissal of Plaintiff's Second Amended Complaint in its entirety. [Id.] For the reasons set forth herein, Defendant's Motion to Dismiss will be denied without prejudice.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

This case arises out of attempts that Plaintiff Kurt Edward Wilson (“Plaintiff”) made, as executor, to seek payment for ten Certificates of Deposit (the “Certificates”) that are allegedly owned by the estate of his late father, Roscoe C. Wilson, and allegedly remain unredeemed. [Docket No. 17, at 3-5.] Between 1975 and 1989, Roscoe C. Wilson purchased seven Certificates from Marine National Bank (“Marine”), [Docket Nos. 14-1, 14-2, 14-7, 14-8, 14-9, 14-10, 14-11], and three Certificates from Horizon National Bank (“Horizon”), [Docket Nos. 14-3, 14-5, 14-6]. Marine was acquired by Horizon on or about January 1, 1989, and Horizon was subsequently renamed Chemical Bank of New Jersey (“Chemical Bank”) on January 3, 1989. [Docket No. 16-1, at 9.] ¶ 1995, Chemical Bank merged into and now operates as PNC Bank. [Id.]

Roscoe C. Wilson passed away in 2002, but for reasons not presented to the Court his estate was not admitted to probate until 2018. [Docket No. 14, ¶¶ 2, 5.] Shortly after the estate was admitted to probate, the probate court authorized Plaintiff to serve as the succeeding executor of the estate. [Id. ¶ 6.] In November 2017, prior to the estate being admitted to probate, Plaintiff located the ten Certificates at issue while looking through the late Roscoe C. Wilson's papers. [Docket No. 16-1, at 8.]

As executor of the estate, Plaintiff brought the Certificates to Defendant (as successor to Marine, Horizon, and Chemical Bank) and sought payment, which Defendant refused. [Id.] Plaintiff alleges that the Certificates remain unredeemed, and that, as the successor to both Marine and Horizon, Defendant must redeem the Certificates. [Docket No. 14.]

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Plaintiff initially brought this action in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Cape May County on September 18, 2020. [Docket No. 1-2.] Defendant removed the case to this Court on January 25, 2021, on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. [Docket No. 1.] Plaintiff has since filed a Second Amended Complaint, which alleges twenty Counts, consisting of one state law breach of contract claim and one state law unjust enrichment claim for each of the ten Certificates at issue. [Docket No. 14.] Defendant filed the instant Motion to Dismiss on March 9, 2021. [Docket No. 16.] Plaintiff timely filed his Brief in Opposition on March 22, 2021. [Docket No. 17.] Defendant timely filed its Reply Brief on March 29, 2021. [Docket No. 18.]

III. LEGAL STANDARD

When considering a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a court must accept all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Evancho v. Fisher, 423 F.3d 347, 351 (3d Cir. 2005). It is well-settled that a pleading is sufficient if it contains “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2).

“While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the ‘grounds' of his ‘entitle[ment] to relief' requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do . . . .” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (alteration in original) (citations omitted) (citing Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957); Sanjuan v. Am. Bd. of Psychiatry & Neurology, Inc., 40 F.3d 247, 251 (7^th Cir. 1994); Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986)).

To determine the sufficiency of a complaint, a court must take three steps. First, the court must “tak[e] note of the elements a plaintiff must plead to state a claim.” Second, the court should identify allegations that, “because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Third, “whe[n] there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement for relief.”

Malleus v. George, 641 F.3d 560, 563 (3d Cir. 2011) (alterations in original) (citations omitted) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 664, 675, 679 (2009)). A court may “generally consider only the allegations contained in the complaint, exhibits attached to the complaint and matters of public record.” Schmidt v. Skolas, 770 F.3d 241, 249 (3d Cir. 2014) (citing Pension Benefit Guar. Corp. v. White Consol. Indus., Inc., 998 F.2d 1192, 1196 (3d Cir. 1993)).

A district court, in weighing a motion to dismiss, asks “not whether a plaintiff will ultimately prevail but whether the claimant is entitled to offer evidence to support the claim.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 563 n.8 (quoting Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974)); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 684 (“Our decision in Twombly expounded the pleading standard for ‘all civil actions' . . . .”); Fowler v. UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d 203, 210 (3d Cir. 2009) (“Iqbal . . . provides the final nail in the coffin for the ‘no set of facts' standard that applied to federal complaints before Twombly.”). “A motion to dismiss should be granted if the plaintiff is unable to plead ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Malleus, 641 F.3d at 563 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).

IV. DISCUSSION

Defendant puts forward three separate arguments for why all twenty Counts should be dismissed: (1) N.J. Stat. Ann. § 17:16W-4(a) provides for a presumption of payment, (2) Plaintiff's claims are barred by the statutory presumption of abandonment under N.J. Stat. Ann. § 46:30-B-18, and (3) Plaintiff's claims are barred by the doctrine of laches. [Docket No. 16.] The Court will address each argument in order.

A. Presumption of Payment

Under New Jersey law, a “passbook” is defined as

a document or record issued by a financial institution, which document or record represents an obligation of the financial institution, which obligation either has no fixed maturity or due date or which by its term is subject to automatic renewal or renewals for an indefinite time or indefinite number of times. Neither a periodic account statement nor any obligation for which applicable law provides a time by which the payment is due is a passbook for the purposes of this act.

N.J. Stat. Ann. § 17:16W-2. New Jersey law governing the payment for passbooks requires that,

if a passbook is presented to a financial institution for payment and the financial institution has no record of the account and there is no record of payment of the account to the State pursuant to any applicable escheat or unclaimed property act:

a. If the presentation of the passbook is made by a successor of the owner more than 15 years after the date of the passbook, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that the account was paid in full to or on behalf of the owner or to a successor of the owner. The passbook itself does not rebut this presumption.

Id. § 17:16W-4. Plaintiff and Defendant both agree that the Certificates at issue here are “passbooks” under relevant New Jersey law and that Section 17:16W-4(a) applies to Plaintiff's request for payment. [See Docket Nos. 16-1, 17.]

Defendant argues that-because the passbook itself does not rebut the presumption of payment and the only documents that Plaintiff has put forward to rebut the presumption of payment are the Certificates themselves-the claims must be dismissed. [Docket No. 16-1, at 11-14.] Defendant also argues that even if Plaintiff could use the Certificates to argue against the presumption, the Certificates do not provide convincing enough evidence to overcome the presumption of payment. [Id.] In opposition, Plaintiff argues that the statute does not bar everything printed on a certificate from being able to rebut the presumption, but rather that it simply imposes a limitation that the mere presentation of a certificate itself, standing alone, cannot be used to rebut the presumption. [Docket No. 17, at 15-20.]

As an initial matter, Plaintiff pointed to additional information other than the Certificates themselves in order to rebut the presumption of payment for Certificates 3, 4, and 5.^[1] [Docket No. 14, ¶¶ 73-75; Docket No. 17, at 25.] Specifically, Plaintiff points to a separate application document that Roscoe C. Wilson filled out for Certificate 4, and argues that similar applications may exist for Certificates 3 and 5 as well since they are identical to Certificate 4 and were obtained from the same bank around the same time. [Id.] Plaintiff has not indicated that he possesses any additional evidence besides the Certificates themselves to rebut the presumption of payment for the other Certificates (Certificates 1, 2, and 6-10).

Whether contractual language on a passbook can be used to rebut the presumption of payment under New Jersey law is a matter of first impression before the Court. While Plaintiff points to compelling policy reasons why the statute should be...