A bankruptcy judge has ruled that while Marc Dreier should testify at an upcoming trial, the imprisoned ex-lawyer can’t do so in his courtroom, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The attorney winding down Dreier’s old law firm wants Dreier to appear in a New York courtroom to bolster her position in a $138 million lawsuit against an investment firm that allegedly profited from Dreier’s fraud. A federal judge granted the request last month, even as Dreier penned a legal plea saying he’d rather not leave the confines of the low-security federal prison in Minnesota where he’s serving out a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty to cheating investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In a rare showing of solidarity between prisoner and prosecutor, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed that Dreier would be better off giving video testimony. In a letter dated Sept. 26, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York expressed concern about the safety of the bankruptcy court at One Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. The U.S. Marshals Service was also concerned about the overall safety of Dreier’s appearance, the letter said, because of “the number of investor-victims who suffered losses as a result of Mr. Dreier’s well-publicized fraud.” Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein decided on Monday that the bankruptcy court did indeed pose too much of a threat and that the testimony should take place in nearby federal district court, Dreier LLP administrator Sheila Gowan said.
