Question 6 From Rocky Mountain News

This post is the sixth of a series of seven questions from the Rocky Mountain for four contributors of the Nacchio trial blog. While the newspaper elected not to publish this question and answers in the article entitled "DU students, professors weigh in on ex-CEO's trial " on April 16th, the following responses represent the opinions to Question 6.

6. What else from this trial stands out for you?

Kevin O’Brien : Nacchio claimed he was a victim of circumstances because he had good motives to sell his stock and it only appears that he engaged in insider trading because he did not actually use any material nonpublic information. Regardless of the jury’s decision, the lesson for executives here is that the government will scrutinize their trades for the presence of material nonpublic information. To avoid the Nacchio victim appearance scenario, executives should never trade when possessing material nonpublic information.

Vaughn Marshall : Although I feel that I learned quite a few things from this trial, it was great to see how all these different concepts and rules that we learn in law school actually play out in the course of litigation. I hope to practice securities law once I graduate, so seeing how the government actually goes about attempting to prove insider trading is just fascinating, even if this case is a bit unusual.

John Holcomb : I am baffled by the defense case. Its choice of witnesses was weak. Neither Anschutz nor the Benedictine monk had anything of substance to offer. The high expectations surrounding Mr. Stern’s performance were never realized, and Nacchio must now be questioning his choice of counsel. The defense was also disorganized. Finally, the exchanges between Judge Nottingham and Mr. Stern will linger. The judge did a great job of moving the trial along.

Armin Sarabi : The most obvious answer, to me, is the amount of entertainment provided by Mr. Stern and Judge Nottingham. I know it may not seem like it, but I thought Judge Nottingham showed great patience for Mr. Stern's shenanigans. Nonetheless, I found their humorous exchanges to much needed relief from the monotony that usually accompanies a cases like this.