Russell P. Miller and Margaret Jane Miller, His Wife v. American Telephone & Telegraph Company (Hereafter At&t)

SEITZ, Chief Judge.

Plaintiffs, stockholders in American Telephone and Telegraph Company (“AT&T”), brought a stockholders’ derivative action in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against AT&T and all but one of its directors. The suit centered upon the failure of AT&T to collect an outstanding debt of some $1.5 million owed to the company by the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) for communications services provided by AT&T during the 1968 Democratic national convention. Federal diversity jurisdiction was invoked under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.

Plaintiffs’ complaint alleged that “neither the…