Lawyers for the former New York Stock Exchange chairman yesterday apparently struck out in a bid to dismiss charges brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
State Supreme Court Judge Charles Ramos rejected Dick Grasso’s bid to dismiss four of the six causes of action Spitzer brought against the former Big Board boss in the legal battle over his whopping $193 million pay package.
Ramos, who didn’t issue a final ruling, told the court that he was “inclined to deny” Grasso’s request and that both sides should proceed with discovery.
The 90-minute hearing featured the Grasso defense team’s primary litigator, Williams & Connolly’s Gerson Zweifach, arguing that Spitzer’s prosecutors had sharply overstepped their bounds regarding the regulation of not-for-profit organizations.
Repeatedly, Zweifach argued Grasso could only be compelled to return the $100 million that Spitzer’s office is demanding if he had knowledge that the payment was given to him based on fraudulent information.
When Ramos was openly skeptical of this approach, Zweifach switched to arguing that the directors of the NYSE had acted in good faith in awarding Grasso $140 million in exit compensation.
This avenue also didn’t impress Ramos, who smiled as Zweifach dramatically and repeatedly argued that Spitzer and his prosecutors were overstepping state law.
At one point, in response to a blizzard of case citations by Zweifach – who seemed to enjoy playing to the audience – Ramos joked that he was “a simple urban judge,” to which Zweifach replied, “And I’m just a country lawyer!”
Although Ramos hasn’t issued his final decision, several people involved in the trial expect Zweifach and his team to file an appeal immediately.
“We aren’t asking for fines or penalties against Grasso,” Spitzer’s deputy Counsel, Avi Schick, told The Post. “We are just asking for money to which he was never entitled be returned to a nonprofit.”
Grasso has bitterly refused to consider returning the money to the NYSE, arguing the compensation was fairly given to him by a board that was fully briefed on every detail of the package.
In turn, Zweifach has scorned the idea of returning any cash to “a club of 1,366 millionaires.”