Replies to post #25019 on Pinnacle Business Management (Prev SRCI)

[janice shell]

I've never looked into the law on this subject, but I've always thought that small claims court dealt with, well, small claims. It doesn't seem logical to me that they'd distinguish among different types of offenses. It's probably easy enough to find out. Certainly in any other kind of court you can sue anyone for anything at all.

The beauty of the idea, of course, is that it'd drive Mr Lobster and Mr T crazy trying to deal with small suits all over the country. And little by little it could end up costing them a bundle.

[janice shell]

This is my favorite part of the SEC's complaint against USXP:

VI. OTHER FALSE OR MISLEADING STATEMENTS
A. Naked Short Selling Statements
74) In September 2003, Altomare began publicly suggesting that so-called "naked short selling" of Universal shares had artificially depressed Universal's stock price. In early October, Altomare stated in an interview that without the downward pressure of "naked shorting" Universal's share price would be much higher. In fact, as of September 30, 2003, the total "fails to deliver" of Universal's shares outstanding was de minimis.

75) In addition, none of Altomare's public statements regarding naked short selling disclosed Universal's issuance of hundreds of millions Universal shares to the re-sellers who had dumped these shares into the market.

76) In a subsequent interview with Dow Jones Newswire, Altomare falsely stated that Universal provided the Commission enforcement staff with 11,000 to 12,000 pages of documents in response to a staff subpoena requesting documents relating to short selling of Universal shares. In fact, Universal's total production in response to the SEC subpoena was only 295 pages, none of which provided evidence that investors or brokers were intentionally failing to deliver Universal shares in connection with "naked short selling."