In a decision that one former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyer classified as capable of “stop[ping] multiple insider trading cases in their tracks,” a three-judge panel concluded that the trial judge erred when he told the jurors not to consider whether the defendants knew that the leakers of the information further up the chain received some “personal benefit.”
The panel further held “that the circumstantial evidence in the case was ‘too thin’ to conclude that the corporate insiders received any personal benefit.”