Fish News

Dallas, Texas, (July 17, 2009) - Attorneys from the Dallas office of Fish & Richardson successfully defended Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban against insider-trading allegations made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Judge Sidney A Fitzwater of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas dismissed the SEC's claims in a 35-page decision on July 17, ruling that the SEC had not shown that Mr. Cuban violated any legal agreement in selling his financial stake in the Canadian Internet search company Mamma.com.

"It is rare for a federal judge to dismiss the government's case this early in the process," said Paul E. Coggins, a principal with Fish & Richardson's Dallas office. "We always argued that they couldn't prove the facts of the case and the law was against them."

According to the SEC lawsuit filed last year, Mr. Cuban sold 600,000 shares of Mamma.com following a telephone conversation with the company's chief executive officer in 2004. SEC investigators alleged that Mr. Cuban violated federal insider trading laws by acting on confidential information that the company was planning to sell additional shares through an equity offering.

In his ruling, Judge Fitzwater wrote that the SEC did not prove that Mr. Cuban "agreed, expressly or implicitly, to refrain from trading on or otherwise using for his own benefit the information the CEO was about to share." Judge Fitzwater allowed the SEC a deadline of 30 days to file an amended complaint, although the agency may choose to appeal the ruling to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

Mr. Cuban was represented in the litigation by Mr. Coggins, Fish & Richardson principal Steve Stodghill, and Kiprian E. Mendrygal, an associate in the firm's Dallas office.