Raymond James wins lawsuit; judge blasts complaint

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Raymond James Financial Inc won the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing the brokerage of reserving too little for loan losses, and the judge rebuked the plaintiff's law firm for filing too long a complaint.

In a ruling Monday evening, U.S. District Judge Robert Patterson in Manhattan said the class-action complaint did not set forth enough facts to suggest that Raymond James intended to defraud investors by purposely underfunding and then misleading investors about the adequacy of its reserves.

Raymond James and a lawyer for the plaintiff, a New York investor named John Woodward, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The class period ran from April 22, 2008 to April 14, 2009, when Raymond James said an abnormally high level of bad loans would nearly wipe out profit in its just-completed quarter. Shares of the St. Petersburg, Florida-based company fell 13.5 percent the next day.

Patterson said most of the alleged misstatements by Raymond James and its executives were too general to mislead investors, which he called "classic puffery," and some simply reflected "mistakes in some of their forward-looking projections."

The judge also said the "extreme length" of the plaintiff's 112-page, 356-paragraph complaint was also grounds for dismissal, under a federal rule requiring that a pleading contain "a short and plain statement" of a claim.

"This appears to be a trend in complaints filed in securities actions," Patterson wrote, "and emphasizes that the federal rules do not require this sort of kitchen-sink complaint in order to survive a motion to dismiss."

Raymond James has more than 5,300 financial advisers.

The case is Woodward v. Raymond James Financial Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-05347.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)