Judge sets ground rules in Mets-Bernie Madoff case

A federal judge ultimately will decide how much the owners of the New York Mets owe if a jury rules during an upcoming trial that they were willfully blind to the fraud of Bernard Madoff.

In a pretrial hearing Friday in Manhattan federal court, Judge Jed Rakoff said nine jurors will decide the willful blindness issue in a trial beginning March 19 over a $300-million lawsuit brought against team owners by the trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy.

Trustee Irving Picard has sued the Wilpon family, partner Saul Katz and their partners in Sterling Equities for that amount, claiming they consciously ignored red flags and warnings by investment professionals about Madoff's scam. The Wilpons, Katz and the other team owners have denied Picard's claim and said they knew nothing of Madoff's fraud.

During the pretrial hearing Rakoff said jurors' answers to three or four questions on a special verdict form will determine if the Mets owners consciously ignored the warnings. If the jury backs the trustee on that issue it will then be up to the court to sort out how much each team owner must pay back of their original investments, Rakoff said. He expected the trial to last about three weeks.

Rakoff has already hit the team owners with one big bill, ruling Monday that they had to pay back as much as $83 million in fictitious profits received from the scam.

Picard had originally sued the Mets owners for as much as $1 billion. But Rakoff last year whittled that amount down to just under $400 million, which includes profits and original investments.