STF na Mídia - MyClipp

Reuters General/ ­- Article, Sex, 13 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
Judge to review moving hundreds of
Madoff cases
By Grant McCool NEW YORK | Fri Apr 13, 2012
5:02pm EDT (Reuters) ­- In the sprawling litigation to
recover money related to Bernard Madoff's fraud, a
federal judge said he would decide whether a 2011
U.S. Supreme Court ruling prevents a bankruptcy
court from resolving hundreds of lawsuits brought by
the Madoff firm's trustee. Defendants in those cases
have sought to transfer their cases to district court from
bankruptcy court, citing the U.S. Supreme Court
decision involving the estate of former Playboy model
Anna Nicole Smith that limited the power of bankruptcy
judges to review claims. In an order published Friday,
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said he will review how
that decision affects cases brought by the trustee,
Irving Picard, against people he believes benefited
improperly from Madoff's fraud. Rakoff consolidated
341 cases in his order and gave the defendants until
June 11 to appoint lead counsel to argue on their
behalf. He scheduled oral argument for June 18.
Smith, who died of a drug overdose in 2007, had
waged a long legal battle to get part of the fortune left
by her late Texas oil baron husband, J. Howard
Marshall, whom she had married in 1994 when she
was 26 and he was 89. Picard was appointed in
December 2008 to recover money for victims of
Madoff, a financier who ran a multibillion­-dollar
investment fraud over several decades, swindling
investors large and small across the globe. Madoff
pleaded guilty in March 2009 to what prosecutors and
the trustee have described as the biggest investment
fraud in history. Madoff, 73, is serving a 150­-year
prison sentence. Picard, who filed his cases in
bankruptcy court, says he has recoveries and
settlement agreements totaling $9.068 billion, but $6.4
billion of that is unavailable due to appeals and
reserves. Picard says Madoff defrauded customers of
about $20 billion. In the latest settlement last month,
Rakoff oversaw a deal between Picard and the
principal owners of the New York Mets Major League
Baseball team, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, who were
longtime friends with Madoff as well as investors. The
case is Securities Investor Protection Corporation v
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of New York, No.
12­-mc­-0115. (Reporting By Grant McCool; Editing by
Dan Grebler)
41