Charles Conaway, the former CEO of Kmart, asked a federal court yesterday to throw out a verdict in a civil trial that found that he misrepresented the company’s financial condition. As previously discussed here, on June 1, 2009, a jury returned a verdict in favor of the SEC on all charges in its case against Conaway following a three-week trial. Based on the verdict, the SEC is now seeking to recover $22.5 million from Conaway
The AP reports that U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Pepe will now rule on Conaway’s post-trial objections, which include a claim that the verdict was tainted by bad jury instructions:
In a court filing, attorney Hille Sheppard said the instructions misstated the law and made it too easy for jurors to find Conaway liable in a highly technical case pressed by the SEC.
“It would have been a very different trial,” Sheppard told the judge Wednesday.
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[...] month, Conaway asked the court to throw out the verdict, arguing that the jury instructions misstated the law and made [...]