In a victory for the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal judge in Manhattan will limit the evidence that Fabrice Tourre can present to jurors about the numerous lawyers who reviewed the transaction at the heart of the SEC's fraud case against the former Goldman Sachs & Co. trader.
The SEC had filed a pretrial motion to bar Tourre from raising an advice of counsel defense or emphasizing that the offering documents for the ABACUS 2007-AC1 collateralized debt obligation had been reviewed by in-house and outside lawyers for Goldman and others. Tourre's legal team, led by Pamela Chepiga of Allen & Overy, maintained that their client wasn't raising an advice of counsel defense, but simply wanted to explain the "institutional process" at Goldman that included layers of legal review for the CDO.
