I have read the legal memo in support of Lederer's MTD and it is not something filed so his lawyer can go home for the day; it is a serious pleading.

What does this mean for the players?

Can you post it on scribd?

yeah i thought Howard was just an individual in this whole scenerio.

why does his motion to dismiss mean something bad for us?

I was referring to the timing of his filing, as opposed to waiting to see if a settlement is reached before midnight. I was not referring to the content of the MTD. I'm sure all of the lawyers have put in plenty of work on preparing them.

It might. If Bitar tells them about an asset that the DoJ didn't already know about, and if the DoJ can seize that asset, then if the PokerStars deal doesn't go through, it means there is that much more available for possible remission payments to players.

At what time can we expect the suits to go home today? Then we know we just wait to see what happens till tomorrow?

Also, today was the last day to file for another extension? So do they have till midnight...?

So are we back to things sucking for a while? (I.E. no one knowing anything and another 5-6 months of darkness)?

No, from what it sounds like with all the legal minds in here, we should hear something soon....

You might want to hang around for a few more hours.

Someone had speculated that the reason RB was being detained last week was so that he could go in front of Judge Kaplan so that he would recuse himself. Looks like that happened. After Kaplan recused himself a miracle happened and the government and the defense came to an agreement.

Below is from DF's latest article.


District court Judge Paul Engelmayer heard the appeal Friday and voiced that, while he felt that denying bail for Bitar was not called for in this case, it should ultimately be decided by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has been the judge overseeing the entire criminal case since its inception. Engelmayer, noting that Kaplan would be back on the bench today following his vacation, ruled that Bitar should remain in custody over the weekend pending Kaplan’s return.

Kaplan took the bench at 2 pm today, and immediately stated that, as he has always done in the past when a defendant in his court was represented by an attorney from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP , he would be recusing himself from all future proceedings as to defendant Bitar.

By the time Engelmayer took the bench to hear the bail vs. detention argument, the govermnment and defense had reached an agreement as to acceptable terms.

What the hell does that mean ?

Exactly

Give 'em hell joey! And don't back down this time!

Let's get the ham sandwich indicted too! It might know where our money went.

The tension is rising. Are we gonna have a

I don't know how to do that but I can email it to you.

It means that 1 person filed today so far and 3 more people and 3 more companies have to.

Edit: or get an extension or settle.

Sent you a pm

So basically HL got his stuff figured out today and what not and now the other 6 entities are trying to figure out their mess too? In a sense?

post on scribd afterwards :P

I love the part where Kaplan offers to entertain motions to sever Burtnick so his case will remain in his court, lol, "Please let me fry one of them". Who does he expect to file that motion?

There is nothing in the way of them cutting Isai a deal now, good theater, I'm looking forward to Act II.

I will

This should be good

A serious pleading in a MTD is probably an indication that Lederer is going to fight the DoJ every step of the way, or until he can get a deal he can live with. A MTD would be standard if the other side was refusing to extend the deadline and the defendent was not planning to fold his tent. A MTD should not be considered surprising. I'll be surprised if we don't see MsTD from all the FTP-related parties. I'll be less surprised if we see something different from Stars-related parties.

The DoJ's treatment of Bitar, and the reported nature of the possible deal with Stars seems to render the FTP people irrelevent to any Stars/DoJ deal, so the DoJ may now have less motivation to get deals with Bitar, Lederer, Ferguson, Furst and Burtnick. Also, the prospect of getting their hands on more of Bitar's assets, and the possibility he will rat out Ferguson and/or Lederer gives the DoJ a fall-back plan for paying players if the Stars deal falls through.

Motions to dismiss have now also been filed by defendants Telamonian Ajax Trust and Rafe Furst. I suspect all defendants are filing MTD's as I type this. When we file motions involving multiple parties, it takes a while for one secretary to do all the ECF filings. I'd expect to see these filed continuously over the course of the evening until all plaintiffs have filed one.

On that note, I'm outta here to go eat and pick up a combo organ.