Last week, we noted that the Fifth Circuit held that the SEC’s Complaint adequately stated a claim against Mark Cuban for insider trading. In that case, the SEC filed suit against Cuban in the Northern District of Texas, accusing him of insider trading. Last week, another decision came out relating to the Cuban case. This decision (pdf copy available here) was issued by Judge Walton from the District of Columbia, and involves a lawsuit Cuban filed against the SEC seeking certain records pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request relating to purported misconduct at the SEC and an SEC employee who, according to Cuban, used his government e-mail system to harass Cuban. The decision appears to be largely in Cuban’s favor.
A couple of interesting things to note from the decision:
- The decision relates to a December 2008 Freedom of Information Act request by Cuban. If you need records from the federal government for one of your cases and intend to seek them pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, seek such records as soon as possible. Otherwise, you might end up receiving them far too late for any use in your case.
- There are many governmental records that are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (the court discusses various exemptions in great detail).
- The SEC sought “three additional years” to review 107 boxes of documents (the court denied this request). We doubt that the SEC would allow a company being investigated by the SEC to take three years to search through 100 boxes of documents (i.e., a relatively small amount of documents for any complicated civil case these days).
Cuban was represented in the District of Columbia by David Ross, of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP, and Lyle Roberts, of Dewey & Leboeuf LLP.