Judge Won't Dismiss Mets-Madoff Suit; Team Owes Up To $83M
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A judge ruled Monday that the Mets' owners owe up to $83 million to the trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff investors, though he expressed doubt that the trustee will succeed in proving at a trial this month that he's entitled to as much as $303 million more.
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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.
Related: Kallas: No Surprise In Mets' Court Decision | Coutinho: Reading Between The Lines Of Judge Rakoff's Ruling
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.
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Rakoff rejected a request by lawyers for the Mets' owners to rule that Picard was not entitled to more money, a ruling that would have eliminated the need for the trial.
The court "remains skeptical that the Trustee can ultimately rebut the defendants' showing of good faith," wrote Rakoff.
Rakoff had already limited what the team's owners might have to pay to other Madoff investors to $386 million. The trustee had sought $1 billion.
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.
The trustee previously sued the Mets' owners, saying they had to know Madoff was acting illegally. Lawyers for the Mets' owners -- Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz -- have repeatedly said that their clients had no idea Madoff wasn't investing their money as he said he was.
"The principal issue remaining for trial is whether the defendants acted in good faith when they invested (with Madoff) in the two years prior to bankruptcy or whether, by contrast, they willfully blinded themselves to Madoff's Ponzi scheme," wrote Rakoff.
Thousands of investors lost billions of dollars in the fraud, which Madoff revealed in December 2008 when he confessed that statements telling investors they had about $68 billion weeks earlier were fraudulent. In fact, only several hundred million dollars were left.
In his lawsuit, Picard said the Mets' owners received $83.3 million in fictitious profits and $301 million in principal in the two years before a bankruptcy filing was made regarding the Madoff assets.
Fred Wilpon said at an appearance in Port St Lucie, Fla. last week that the Mets' owners plan to keep the franchise "for a very long time."
He cited a slashed payroll and an encouraging outlook in the courts.
"When it started, there was a really big number out there and now — I'm not minimizing — but it's a different number," Wilpon said.
Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina for his multibillion-dollar fraud.
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