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By stan_sipple

Lake loses document discovery motion in Federal Court in which he sought to show collusion between Westar Energy and the Government for his second retrial. Kansas City Business Journal. Last week Federal District Court Judge Julie Robinson said Lake's request for subpoenas for documents from law firms representing Westar (NYSE: WR) and its board was overly broad. "In short, defendant's motion for subpoenas is based on speculation and conjecture," the order stated. In preparation for Lake's and former Westar CEO David Wittig's third criminal trial, in which they're accused of looting the utility for their personal gain, Lake's attorneys tried to find out whether Westar had curried favor with federal prosecutors by helping the government's case in exchange for avoiding prosecution against the company.
But the January request for subpoenas by Lake's Blackwell Sanders LLP attorneys suggested that it wasn't certain the documents they sought even existed. The subpoenas sought correspondence, notes and records from Westar's attorneys at New York-based law firm Lankler Siffert & Wohl LLP and attorneys from New York-based firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, which represented Westar's special committee of the board. Lake's attorneys also sought to establish a connection between federal prosecutors' attempts to get Westar to stop paying Lake's legal fees in relation to his criminal charges, which the utility was ordered to pay as a result of an employment contract stipulation.Robinson said in her ruling that Lake's attorneys fell short of explaining why any such arrangement between Westar and federal prosecutors, if true, related to charges against the former executive. Lake and Wittig go to trial in September for the third time on charges of using the utility's money to pay for lavish travel expenses, among other things. <>United States v. Lake (here) , when judges ruled that the government had not proved that the executives needed to report the personal use of Westar's airplane to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Full post as published by Showmeblawgs on February 06, 2008 (boomark / email).