An important court decision was released this week in the case brought by the Trustee for the Madoff victims in federal court against the New York Mets ownership to recover $1 billion.  The ruling limited the potential exposure for the Mets down to $386 million (still a lot of money).  Check out this NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/business/mets-ruling-may-reduce-payout-to-madoff-victims.html?ref=irvinghpicard

For Mets fans like me, the team’s financial crisis sadly continues.   Most fans just want the current owners to sell the team to a more functional and financially stable owner, but we have no real hope that the Wilpons will ever do the right thing and liberate our beloved Mets from their mismanagement.  We are stuck with a mediocre/non-playoff team for the near future, as the Yankees are off to the playoffs again.

More important than the Mets saga though, this ruling may limit the Trustee’s overall efforts to recover funds for the victims of Madoff’s fraud.  Based on this ruling, the Trustee may only be able to seek recovery of $6.2 billion, rather than the original goal of $11 billion.  Check out this NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/madoff-trustee-says-mets-ruling-wont-be-as-bad-as-first-thought.html

This ruling, which only deals with the recovery efforts against the Mets owners, could set a precedent by limiting the Trustee to only seeking “fictional profits” that were paid out to the Mets owners for the two-year period before the Madoff fraud scandal was discovered in December 2008.  The Trustee was originally seeking such profits paid out in the prior six years.  The court also dismissed the Trustee’s effort to recover “preference claims,” which were moneys paid out to Mets owners in the final 90 days of the Madoff fraud.  It is expected that this ruling will be appealed.

If you would like to read the court’s opinion, here it is:

Picard v Katz 11 Civ 3605 JSR