Judge Tosses SEC Case Against Mavericks Owner

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has won dismissal of civil insider trading accusations filed against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—at least for now.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater of Dallas gave the SEC 30 days to file an amended suit, Reuters reports. The SEC had maintained Cuban sold his shares in an Internet search engine company, Momma.com, after receiving confidential information on a proposed stock offering, the Associated Press reports.

Cuban was defended by lawyers from Dewey & LeBoeuf, who claimed Cuban never agreed to keep confidential the information about the proposed stock sale. Fitzwater said the SEC could filed an amended complaint if it “can allege that Cuban undertook a duty, expressly or implicitly, not to trade on or other otherwise use material, nonpublic information."

Cuban has taken the offensive in the case, suing the SEC for documents regarding its investigation of him, according to a May report on the New York Times DealBook blog. Cuban is seeking records of any internal investigation of SEC lawyer Jeffrey Norris, who wrote an e-mail criticizing Cuban. The e-mail, which later surfaced in news accounts, derided Cuban for financing a documentary said to suggest that President Bush planned the demolition of the World Trade Center as a pretext for going to war against Iraq.

The SEC has said Norris had no role in the investigation of Cuban.