Legal Ethics
Dewey Lawyers Defend Mark Cuban on Blog, Claim SEC Misconduct
Posted Nov 19, 2008, 08:33 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Lawyers for billionaire Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are defending civil accusations of insider trading on his blog and leveling their own charge of misconduct against the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lawyers from Dewey & LeBoeuf write on the blog that Mark Cuban never agreed to keep information confidential about a proposed stock offering in Mamma.com, Reuters reports. The Securities and Exchange Commission claims a confidential conversation spurred Cuban to sell his stock in the search engine company before it was diluted by the offering.
Law firm partner Ralph Ferrara writes that “Cuban intends to contest the allegations and to demonstrate that the commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its enforcement division.”
While Ferrara did not detail the alleged misconduct, the New York Times obtained an e-mail message said to be from SEC lawyer Jeffrey B. Norris that offers a clue. The Norris e-mail criticizes Cuban for financing a “vicious and absurd documentary” called Loose Change. The e-mail says the documentary “posits that President Bush planned the demolition of the World Trade Center as a pretext for going to war against Iraq.”
Norris says in the e-mail, printed on Floyd Norris' blog for the New York Times, that he will tell SEC chairman Christopher Cox about Cuban’s actions.
An SEC spokesman told the Times that the Norris e-mail was referred for disciplinary action and that Norris had no role in the Mamma.com investigation. The spokesman also said Cox did not vote when the commission approved the filing of the complaint.