Posts by TeriBuhl:
NY State Court Halts Judge Shopping in RMBS Putback Cases
June 12th, 2013
By Teri Buhl.
UPDATE 4pm: The NY Courts have now issued an official policy about their ‘One Judge’ for RMBS cases. Ironically on the same day I started asking questions about these private decision they are now public!
Orignal Text
Banks looking to judge shop in RMBS putback cases filed in New York State court are going to get shut out of the process. Apparently there are so many cases to litigate against banks, like JP Morgan and Credit Suisse selling billions of garbage mortgage securities to investors, that administrative judge Sherry Heitler has decreed all RMBS cases as of March 2013 now go to one judge. Roberta McClinton, Heitler’s law clerk, confirmed this today explaining that similar cases need to go to one judge now because it’s for ‘judicial economy’.
This news just came to light after I saw a non-public letter from Judge Heitler to JP Morgan’s outside counsel ,Andrew Cereseney and Robert Sacks, stating she appreciated JPM’s letter about their desire to have the NY AG’s civil fraud case against JP Morgan assigned to Judge Ramos but the court’s new policy is all commercial RMBS cases are now going to Judge Friedman.
for More on this investigative piece provided by Teri Buhl go to:
http://www.teribuhl.com/2013/05/23/ny-state-court-halts-judge-shopping-in-rmbs-putback-cases/
Hedgie T.Boone Pickens Sues to Squash Son’s Tell-All Speech About Family Emotional Abuse
May 10th, 2013By Tery Buhl.
Texas oil millionaire T. Boone Pickens is trying to use the Dallas state courts to squash his son’s first amendment rights after Mike Pickens wrote a tell-all blog about the famed hedge fund manager’s troubling family dynamics. The blog titled 5 days in Connecticut posted ‘my story’ which centers on how 85-year old Boone’s emotional abuse caused his 55-year old son’s drug and alcohol abuse along with a litany of other alleged facts going back to childhood whippings.
In the original compliant Boone first tried to call Mike’s actions Cyber-bullying/ Cyber-harassment but the actual legal claim that was filed was invasion of privacy and common law defamation. Texas doesn’t actually have Cyber-bullying laws for adult online speech but that didn’t stop Caleb Melby, Forbes staff writer, to headline a story last month that Boone was suing for Cyber-bullying.
In something that reads like a hit piece written especially for a Forbes labeled Billionaire, who likely is only a millionaire these days, Forbes misses the guts of the legal dynamics that are actually happening. Boone, who has a history of suing if you write negatively about him, is throwing cash at lawyers to stop speech because it feels uncomfortable.
He even got a two week temporary injunction order on his son, Mike, to force him to take the story down but Mike’s lawyer ,Collin Porterfield, got it amended on March 1st at a hearing about the injunction. Court transcripts show Judge Parker also told Boone’s attorney that they didn’t have a Cyber-bullying claim but Forbes ignored that or didn’t bother to check the transcript and still reported this was the legal action Boone took.
On top of that, after the court allowed Mike to print an edited version of the story, Boone fired his lawyer and picked a new one named Leland de la Garza of Shackelford, Melton & McKinley, LLP. The new attorney’s 3rd amended complaint doesn’t focus on Cyber-bullying this time and was filed April 13th, a few days before the Forbes story ran. Still Forbes runs an inaccurate headline that Mike is being sued for Cyber-bullying.
For more information on Teri’s Investigative piece go to: http://www.teribuhl.com/2013/05/03/hedgie-t-boone-pickens-sues-to-squash-sons-tell-all-speech-about-family-emotional-abuse/
Finance Executive, Kevin Arnone, Involved in NCPD Pickering Criminal Investigation
April 9th, 2013
By TeriBuhl.
Original Story
A wall st. buddy of New Canaan police officer Fred Pickering tried to intimidate a young black man after he vocalized his ill feelings for the veteran officer at a local bar. Kevin M. Arnone, age 51, who lives in a $3 million house in the Silvermine area of New Canaan called Joel Anderson a ‘Nigger’ according to two people on the scene at Tequila Mockingbird. Pickering made headlinesearlier in the month when the NCPD admitted they had to put him on leave after another compliant came in about him that involved racial issues.
When I reached Arnone’s wife, Lisa, at their home on 429 Carter Rd in New Canaan and asked about the racial statements her husband allegedly made this afternoon she said I’d have to talk to Kevin about that. Kevin did not return an email request for comment. Mr. Arnone owned a seat on the AMEX exchange and was a principle at Iron Horse Capital LLC. He also owns some real estate holding companies.
To get some insight into who Picerking’s friend Kevin Arnone is, a look at his about section on his facebook page says a lot: “I love myself and don’t care who dislikes me. I love money more than friends..greed is good.”
For more on this investigative story written by Teri Buhl please go to:
San Bernardino County Backs Down From Shoddy Housing Plan Using Eminent Domain
February 1st, 2013by Teri Buhl.
A Southern California government official tried to go up against Wall Street this summer when he shocked the mortgage bond community by telling them he was thinking about using eminent domain to force-buy underwater mortgages out of the securities at a discount. That man was Greg Devereaux, a former city planner, who is the appointed CEO of San Bernardino County located in the Inland Empire of Southern California. It’s one of the largest counties in the state who had one of it’s larger cities last year. On Thursday at a public hearing Devereaux did a bit of a 180 and basically said he couldn’t take the risk of using eminent domain because Wall Street would attack it and his constituents were voicing really didn’t want to do it.
I was on the ground for six weeks this summer following the hearing and community reaction in the county. Viewers of RT’s Keiser Report saw me explain how these good-hearted muni officials were about to get bamboozled by a San Francisco venture capitalist with a firm call Mortgage Resolution Partners. What we were really faced with was two finance groups duking it out over profits with financial screwed homeowners as the sucker in the middle. MRP played San Bernardino’s heart-strings by promising to clean out the abundance of underwater homes in the county that were keeping real estate recovery at a stall.
Darien banker Jennings Bad Arrest Leads to Millions of lost Compensation
January 31st, 2013By Teri Buhl.
Today the Wall Street Journal has a story showing how Darien banker William Bryan Jennings got totally screwed over by Morgan Stanley after he was arrested for a hate crime the state of Connecticut later dropped. One of my readers had commented last month in some of the storiesI’d written about Jennings that the investment bank he spent two decades with wasn’t going to pay him millions in deferred compensation. I tried to follow-up on that news but it looks like theWSJ beat me to it.
You see most bank executives don’t get their full bonuses when they are awarded each year. The bank usually sets up a 2-3 year deferred stock payout to keep great performers in their job. Jennings was one of those bankers who has now learned bad pr for him equals Morgan Stanley is going to take the opportunity to not fork over millions in pay he previously earned. TheJournal says Jennings wasn’t fired until October – a few weeks before all charges were dropped. Morgan Stanley claims they can fire him because his actions hurt the firm even though his job performance isn’t why he’d be fired. Sounds like a totally BS excuses to me. What’s also troubling is the CT assistant States attorney, Weiss, waited until October to drop the charges when he knew in May the cabbie had lied about having the weapon all along — in May Jennings was still employed by Morgan Stanley.
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