Opinion ID: 1443085
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Appellants' Obtain SEC Documents

Text: The appellants' counsel in the Coleman case also represents the plaintiffs in Lundeen, et al. v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, No. 04C-03-200 (RRC). That is another action filed in the Superior Court in which those plaintiffs allege that they sold their company to Lason in 1998, in purported reliance on PwC's audit report on Lason's 1997 financial statements, which they, too, allege contained negligent misrepresentations. On May 9, 2005, subsequent to the Superior Court's oral grant of summary judgment to appellants in the Coleman matter, appellants' counsel served in the companion Lundeen matter a subpoena on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for all documents produced to the SEC by the Special Committee or its counsel that related to the Special Investigation. No similar subpoena had been served in the instant Coleman matter. Four days later, on May 13, 2005, the SEC agreed to make those documents available for review by appellants' counsel. Among the documents received by appellants' counsel from the SEC were (i) an email, dated August 4, 1998, from Cheryl Dunn, the PwC audit engagement partner for the audits of Lason's 1997 and 1998 financial statements, to William Rauwerdink, Lason's Chief Financial Office (CFO) (the Dunn e-mail); and (ii) a letter from PwC to the SEC, dated March 11, 2002 (the March 11, 2002 Letter), that was part of the Lason Form 8-K publicly filed with the SEC on March 14, 2002. In this appeal, the appellee admits that these documents had not been produced by PwC to appellants' counsel in the Coleman matter, and argue those documents were irrelevant to the Superior Court's granting of summary judgment. The appellee submits that March letter was not produced by PwC because PwC, in response to appellants' document requests in Coleman and the related Carello and Lundeen matters, consistently objected to the production of documents, like the March 11, 2002 Letter, that were publicly available to the appellants. The appellee also asserts that the March 11, 2002 Letter does not provide any evidence of material misstatements in Lason's 1997 financial statements.