Patricia Scott Anderson v. Air West, Incorporated

This case presents an appeal from an order of the district court dismissing with prejudice the plaintiff’s complaint against twenty individual directors of Air West, Incorporated because of her failure to prosecute the action with reasonable diligence. The dismissals were granted under four separate motions, but all involve the same issues and so were consolidated for appeal. We hold that the district judge did not abuse the discretion granted to him under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) and thus we affirm the order of dismissal.

I.

The Facts.

The plaintiff, a shareholder of Air West, filed the original complaint in this action on March 30,1973. The complaint arose out of alleged fraud and other irregularities in the sale of Air West to Hughes Air Corp. The sale was closed on March 31, 1970, and so the timing of filing was clearly influenced by the three-year statute of limitations applicable to such actions. Plaintiff did serve a summons and complaint on some of the named corporate defendants, but nothing was served on any of the individual directors of Air West. On June 25, 1973, an ex parte order extending the time for serving the individual defendants to such time as…