SAN FRANCISCO A former in-house lawyer and two other defendants still fighting stock option backdating charges filed five years ago lost a bid to have their case dismissed over claims that the Securities and Exchange Commission mishandled millions of documents, but a federal judge Tuesday left open the possibility that the defense would be able to tell jurors about the deleted documents when the case goes to trial.
Defense attorneys for former executives from Mercury Interactive Corp., including former general counsel Susan Skaer, one of Silicon Valley’s first in-house lawyers caught up in the backdating scandal, had asked the court in April to dismiss the SEC’s case as a sanction for spoliation of evidence. In a supplemental filing, they asked alternatively for lesser sanctions, including an adverse inference instruction telling jurors that evidence had been destroyed.
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