My compliments on Elliott Scheinberg’s article, “”Mahoney-Buntzman’ and ‘Johnson’: Persisting Issues in Matrimonial Law,” on June 29. I would point out two things: First, this was one of the few, if not only, cases dealing with a publicly traded company. While the Court of Appeals did not seem to place any significance in this point, I think it is critical to the issue of active or passive appreciation. Neither the husband, Arol Buntzman nor his experts offered any connection between the price of the stock on any given day and the acts of Mr. Buntzman
Ignored are the caveats in the 10K of his corporation, EVCI, which points out numerous factors which can affect the price of the stock unrelated to the acts of any principal. If the trial court had addressed that issue, it wouldn’t have needed to consider any potential differences between the First and Second departments. In realty, and as I argued in our briefs to the Court of Appeals, I’m not sure the so-called differences between the departments aren’t form over substance when the cases are analyzed closely.
