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Speaker 1: And now time for our daily Bloomberg labrary if exploring

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Speaker 1: legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg lawhost Student Grosso

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Speaker 1: and Michael Best discussed the insider trading case of Las

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Speaker 1: Vegas gambler Billy Walters, who was found guilty in a

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Speaker 1: New York court on Friday. They speak to Peter Henning,

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Speaker 1: a professor at Wayne State University, and Robert Hacketts, a

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Speaker 1: professor at Cornell University Law School. Peter, how important was

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Speaker 1: this win for federal prosecutors? Well, it was important because

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Speaker 1: it was so high profile. Billy Walters is maybe the

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Speaker 1: most famous defendant since Raja Gupta, who was the former

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Speaker 1: director at Goldman Sachs. And it just almost had a

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Speaker 1: tabloid feel to it, with Phil Mickelson and Carl Icon's

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Speaker 1: name coming up the government FBI agent leaking information back

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Speaker 1: in twenty uh fourteen about the case. In a sense,

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Speaker 1: it was high profile because it was tabloid. Um, the

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Speaker 1: legal issues really weren't all that difficult. Um And even

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Speaker 1: if that Newman case from fourteen had remained, the government

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Speaker 1: had evidence that um, some of the inside information was

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Speaker 1: to help pay off loans, so it would not have

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Speaker 1: raised the issue of friendship at least not as much.

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Speaker 1: So it's important because it's high profile, Bob. The defense

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Speaker 1: seemed to argue that the only way the jury could

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Speaker 1: convict Walter's here was if they believed Tom Davis, the

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Speaker 1: former chairman of Dean Foods, who was passing information to

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Speaker 1: Walter's and they argued that he was lying, he had debts,

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Speaker 1: he was he had done all sorts of unsavory things. Um,

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Speaker 1: how much did the case really rely on Davis's testimony?

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Speaker 1: I don't actually think that the case was all that

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Speaker 1: reliant on davis The testimony. There was a lot of

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Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence as well, in the form of, for example,

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Speaker 1: phone records, right, so Mr Davis of course would pass

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Speaker 1: on the information uh Toms Walters, and Mr Walters would

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Speaker 1: then oftentimes phone to place his trades literally within the

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Speaker 1: same minute that he got off of the phone with

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Speaker 1: Mr Davis. So if you've got a pattern of that

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Speaker 1: sort that's sort of repeated over and over and over again,

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Speaker 1: all that Mr Davis's testimony actually ends up doing is

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Speaker 1: sort of providing a little bit of narrative context, a

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Speaker 1: little bit of extra color. But as far as the

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Speaker 1: sort of fundamental evidence, that's needed to convict us concerns.

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Speaker 1: It seems that that was actually all available even without

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Speaker 1: Mr Davis. That's Robert Hockett, Professor at Cornell University Law School,

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Speaker 1: and Peter Henning, professor at Wayne State University, speaking to

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law host stud In Grosso and Michael Best. You

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Speaker 1: can hear Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm aall street

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Speaker 1: time here on Bloomberg Radio, and that's this morning's Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Law bree If you can find more legal news at

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg Bienna dot com. Attorneys

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Speaker 1: will find exceptional legal research and business development tools there

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Speaker 1: as well. Is a Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Bna dot com for more information