The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit heard oral arguments in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against Michael Shanahan Jr., who served on ESSI's board of directors and was a member of the company's compensation committee. The court took the case under advisement.
The case comes to the appeals court from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, where Judge Jean C. Hamilton ruled on the 10th day of trial that a reasonable jury could not conclude that Shanahan was liable for securities violations. "It's always hard to gauge from the judges' questions, but they did seem to ask more pointed questions of the SEC," Stuart Gasner, an attorney at Keker & Van Nest LLP who argued the case for Shanahan, said of Tuesday's hearing. "We have a lot of confidence in Judge Hamilton's ruling."
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