U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued his four-page ruling to narrow the subject of a March 19 trial in Manhattan that results from Trustee Irving Picard’s effort to force the club’s owners to pay as much as $1 billion into a fund established to repay thousands of investors cheated of billions of dollars during Madoff’s decades-long fraud.
Last year, Rakoff had ruled that the team’s owners wouldn’t owe more than $386 million to other Madoff investors. He made it clear then that they would likely owe up to $83 million but said the trustee must prove that the Mets’ owners “willfully blinded” themselves to Madoff’s fraud to get more.
His ruling Monday determined that the exact amount up to $83 million won’t be left to the jury but will be decided by him in a future written decision, likely after he hears more from lawyers on both sides.
Rakoff rejected a request by lawyers for the Mets’ owners to say Picard wasn’t entitled to more money, a ruling that would have eliminated the need for the trial. But he said he “remains skeptical that the trustee can ultimately rebut the defendants’ showing of good faith.”
He said he was concerned that much of the evidence offered by both sides in court papers so far would not be admissible at trial.
“Conclusions are no substitute for facts, and too much of what the parties characterized as bombshells proved to be nothing but bombast,” he wrote.
Amanda Remus, a spokeswoman for Picard, said the trustee and his lawyers were aware of Rakoff’s order and were reviewing it.
Sterling Partners, a business entity that includes the Mets’ owners, said in a statement: “We are preparing for trial. We look forward to demonstrating that we were not willfully blind to the Madoff fraud.”
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