Plus, Iceman got elected president…

Plus that Valkyrie movie is set to be a bomb. Don't know about Mel Gibson.

And corporate law maven Steve Bainbridge believes that the SEC has a "pretty good case" against him.

That is, it's a "pretty good case" if they can find a Court that's willing to ignore the requirement of a fiduciary relationship established by the Supreme Court in Chiarella, and reaffirmed in Dirks, or allow the SEC to pursue its "misappropriation" theory (based on the SEC's Rule 10b5-2) in a case where, according to the Complaint, Cuban was NOT an insider, Cuban did NOT solicit or request the information, and there was NO explicit promise by Cuban not to ACT on the information.

Frankly, if the SEC wants to stop this particular brand of insider trading, all they need to do is go after Mamma.com's CEO, who had no legitimate reason for sharing the inside information, other than to try to hamstring Cuban. I've lost none of my respect for Cuban after reading the Complaint, assuming everything in it is factually accurate. I will NOT however, ever invest in a company in which Guy Faure (Mamma.com's CEO) is an officer or has any position of responsibility -- that guy is a dishonest weasel with no regard for the rights or interests of shareholders.

Great true story about my buddy. We were in Boston, walking along Newbury St. on a fall Sunday evening to hit the bars. We see Val walking past us with a lady friend. My friend smiles at him and says "Hey Val, what's up man?" in a friendly tone. Dic Holiday ignores him.

My buddy then says it again in a louder voice, as maybe Kilmer didn't hear him the first (which was possible). Kilmer stops, turns around, and yells at the top of his lungs "Get a F***ing life kid!" with a snarl on his face, then stalks away. I froze there, astounded, while my buddy doesn't miss a beat and yells right back "well, you sucked as Batman anyways!"

If you are commenting on Bainbridge's analysis, you should read it first. Bainbridge explains the theory by which Cuban could be considered an insider, citing precedents, and he's not talking about some across the board liberal interpretation. He just notes uncertainty about one issue, on which the court might easily go either way. If it takes a more liberal approach, he says Cuban uses.

Normally I would respond to this on a sports blog, but as a Mavs fan, I cannot let this go unsaid.

Another mediocre postseason by Dirk?

Dirk's last 3 postseasons:

2005 (the Finals year): 27 ppg, 11.7 rbpg.
2006: 19.7 ppg, 11.3 rbpg.
2007 (The supposedly bad year): 26.8 ppg, 12 rbpg.

The Mavs have choked, but you can't blame Dirk. I expect a full retraction.

Bainbridge explains the theory by which Cuban could be considered an insider, citing precedents, and he's not talking about some across the board liberal interpretation. He just notes uncertainty about one issue, on which the court might easily go either way.

What you are talking about is the "constructive insider" theory, which is quite readily applied to accountants, lawyers, investment bankers, underwriters, and other consultants who are retained by the share issuer to assist in a given transaction. Courts have used the "constructive insider" label to create the fiduciary relationship status required under the Supreme Court's holdings in Chiarella and Dirks as a prerequisite to insider trading liability. The problem here is that Cuban does not fit into ANY of those categories; he was certainly not retained by mamma.com to assist in the PIPE transaction. His position as a 6.2% shareholder is not enough to create an insider status, he was not an officer or director, and he did not solicit the information from the CEO.

Yes, a Court might go against Cuban on this issue, based solely on his verbal agreement to keep the info confidential (a promise which he apparently kept, by the way; he never made a promise not to ACT on the information, only that he wouldn't reveal it to others), but if so, he has a better than decent case on appeal that the legal ruling that created the "fiduciary relationship" that made him an "insider" was contrary to controlling Supreme Court precedent.

As a Spurs fan I was unhappy that the Mavericks won on election night.

And as a Spurs fan, I hit the Val Kilmer link wondering why I hadn't heard of George Gervin's political ambitions.

Wow...is this the first time the Dallas Mavs have gotten any virtual ink at Volokh? (I'd do a search but I'm far too lazy for that.) As a Mavs and Dirk fan I'm with Brett above; the idea that Nowitzki had a bad post-season is widely accepted among the masses, but it just ain't true. This seasons is, thus far, an unfortunately different story.

And how did Ilya miss this story, about a somewhat hostile e-mail exchange between Cuban and an SEC attorney in the Ft. Worth office about Cuban's participation in the documentary "Loose Change"?

Yes, SFBurke, I do have a personal animus against the CEO - I think that whatever way you look at it he breached his fiduciary duty to the stockholders he was supposed to serve. If the company needed new capital, he had an affirmative duty to seek ways to raise the capital in a way that wouldn't damage the existing shareholders; the PIPE he arranged certainly wasn't it; the Company could have issued warrants to the existing shareholders which would have given them the right to protect their existing investment, instead of arranging a private infusion of capital at a price below the market price for the stock, a transaction which was guaranteed to both reduce the share price and dilute existing shareholders. Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that the Company was desparate for new capital, and the PIPE was the ONLY way to go, why did the CEO contact Cuban, to the exclusion of the other shareholders he was supposed to serve? Is there some arcane rule of corporate governance that I'm unaware of that says the fiduciary duty of officers and directors runs only to the largest shareholders?

All that having been said, just why does my judgment about the CEO of Mamma.com weaken my argument? The only issue in the case (assuming all of the facts of the complaint to be true) is whether or not Cuban owed a fiduciary duty to the Company. Does my thinking that Guy Faure is a weasel somehow create that duty? Cuban is not a traditional insider - he's not a director, officer, or even a controlling shareholder. Even if Guy Faure was the most honest, upright guy in the world, his conversation with Cuban would not create, out of thin air, a fiduciary relationship between Cuban and Mamma.com, and without such a relationship, there cannot be any "insider trading", for the simple reason that Cuban is not an insider. Please explain why you are less convinced of my argument just because you disagree with my judgment regarding Faure, a matter which is completely irrelevant to my conclusion.

Daily Kos can't bring itself to give Ilya credit.