Lawyers for Martha Stewart scored a victory on Friday when the judge in Stewart's criminal trial said she would not allow the jury to hear testimony from Wall Street analysts and other experts about whether public statements she made influenced investors in her company.
The ruling by US Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum is helpful to Stewart's defense on the charge of securities fraud she faces. A person involved in Stewart's defense said the ruling "renders the securities fraud charge dead on arrival," although other material may be introduced by prosecutors themselves.
The motion made by Stewart's lawyers, which came in the form of a letter delivered to the judge on Thursday, was not made available. Stewart is accused of misleading investors when she made public statements about her sale of nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems, calling it "entirely lawful" and saying it took place because of an agreement with her broker to sell if the share price fell below US$60.
The securities fraud charge has been called "unusual" or "novel" by various legal experts, including Cedarbaum, and it may be difficult to persuade jurors of Stewart's guilt because her name is so closely linked to that of her company.
Defense lawyers also questioned an FBI agent, Catherine Farmer, about her interviews with Stewart, pointing out to the jury that Farmer did not tape record the interviews and relied solely on her own notes and her memory when she wrote up a report on what Stewart told her.
The prosecution announced that it would rest next Thursday.
Meanwhile, the company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, sustained a public-relations blow with the revelation that Kmart, its longtime partner in selling a line of Martha Stewart sheets, towels and other merchandise, is suing it in a federal bankruptcy court.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday but announced Friday by Stewart's company, which said that Kmart was seeking to pay Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia less than it was owed under a contract signed in 2001.
At issue are royalty payments that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia says it is owed but that Kmart contends are not part of the contract. Stewart's company is guaranteed a minimum payment even if sales in Kmart stores fall short, and her company has said that it expected only the minimum for last year.
In a statement, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said that its contract with Kmart required two types of royalty payments. One is based on total sales of all licensed products in Kmart stores, and the other based on sales in individual product categories, such as housewares. The payments are calculated on a quarterly basis but paid once a year, at the end of Kmart's fiscal year, which ends in January.
Merchandise sold through Kmart accounts for most of products sold by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts