## Facts

- Boise Cascade Corporation acquired West Tacoma Newsprint Co. in November 1969, and Newsprint shareholders exchanged their shares for Boise stock trading at about $75 per share.
- In the early 1970s, Boise made asset write-downs for multiple reasons, and its stock price allegedly fell to about $12 per share.
- Beginning in 1972, former Newsprint shareholders sued Boise Cascade, its auditors (Arthur Andersen & Co.), and certain officers and directors for alleged federal and Washington securities-law violations, including claims under the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, and Washington securities statutes.
- Related actions were consolidated for pretrial proceedings by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation as an MDL.
- Discovery and trial preparation were massive, including production of over 900,000 documents, extensive attorney time, and an expected trial length of four to six months.
- Defendants moved to strike plaintiffs’ jury demands; after the ruling, the court later addressed plaintiffs’ litigation conduct concerning interlocutory review and proceeding to a bench trial.

## Issues

1. Whether the Seventh Amendment permits striking civil jury demands in a securities-fraud MDL when the factual and legal complexity exceeds a jury’s ability to understand and reliably decide the case.
2. Whether plaintiffs waived any jury-trial claim by electing to proceed with a bench trial without pursuing certified interlocutory review of the jury-demand ruling.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motions to strike the jury demands, concluding a bench trial could proceed without violating the Seventh Amendment.
- The court reasoned that the case’s extraordinary technical and evidentiary complexity made a jury unable to function as a reliable fact-finder.
- The court emphasized that a judge could manage and evaluate the record more effectively than a jury in a months-long, document-heavy accounting dispute.
- In a supplemental order, the court treated plaintiffs’ choice to proceed without interlocutory appeal and to go forward with a bench trial as a waiver of any jury-trial entitlement they might assert.

## Legal Principles

- The Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial is not absolute where a jury cannot practically perform its fact-finding role due to extreme complexity.
- A court may strike a jury demand when the scope, technical character, and volume of proof make informed, accurate jury decision-making impracticable.
- In assessing whether striking a jury demand is permissible, a court may consider the anticipated length of trial, the mass of documents, the technical nature of disputed accounting and financial matters, and the effect on jury representativeness and impartiality in an unusually long proceeding.
- Litigation conduct after a jury-demand ruling—such as declining certified interlocutory review and proceeding to a bench trial—can constitute waiver of any claimed jury-trial right.

## Conclusion

The court held that, given the exceptional complexity and technical accounting issues in the consolidated securities litigation, striking plaintiffs’ jury demands was consistent with the Seventh Amendment because a jury could not reliably perform the fact-finding function, and it later treated plaintiffs’ choice to proceed without interlocutory review as a waiver of any jury-trial claim.


In re Boise Cascade Sec. Litig., 420 F. Supp. 99 (W.D. Wash. 1976)