Judge orders retrial in case against ruthless hedge fund manager
A contentious court battle that painted a former high-flying hedge fund manager as so savage toward his underlings that one of them filed a police report against him has been sent back to the drawing board.
On Tuesday, a New York state appeals court ordered a retrial in the civil case against Paul Touradji, the notoriously brash founder of Touradji Capital Management, who has been accused of stiffing two former staffers out of millions.
Tuesday’s ruling vacates a $90 million judgment Touradji had been ordered to pay the two former staffers — Gentry Beach and Robert Vollero — following a two-week trial last spring. And it means Touradji, who once managed billions, could be ordered to sit through a second rehashing of his allegedly ugly office antics.
“This appealed decision requires a new trial based on a technicality,” Robert Seiden, a lawyer representing Vollero and Beach, told The Post of the setback. “The jury spoke loud and clear last time that Paul Touradji abused his employees, and we’re confident that another jury will do so again.”
Touradji’s lawyers disagreed. “This is not a technicality, not by any stretch,” argued Touradji lawyer Sean O’Brien. “This is a substantive ruling that vacates the ruling against my client. Before today, [Vollero and Beach] had $90 million. Today they have $0.”
The legal battle had been raging for a decade before it finally went to a jury last year. As The Post reported in June, the evidence presented at trial painted Touradji as a vitriolic boss who once gave Beach a tongue-lashing so fierce he told the police he was “in fear of his safety.”
During the confrontation, which was delivered in an “extremely unpleasant, loud, raging voice,” Touradji slammed the glass door to his Park Avenue office “so hard” that the pictures from a neighboring office were knocked to the ground, according to a Touradji Capital analyst who was called to testify.
“I will not pay you, I will not pay you a dime, you know, and before this is done and over, your wife will be here in this office, here on her knees, begging for mercy,” Touradji ranted, according to the Touradji Capital analyst.
“When I am done with you, you will never find a job on Wall Street again,” Touradji told Beach, the witness said.
In another bizarre incident, Beach, who collects watches, testified that his former boss once taunted him amid their bonus dispute by asking him what type of timepiece he most desired — and then buying the exact same model, a Patek Philippe, and flaunting it in the underling’s face.
The Manhattan appeals court ruled that Touradji’s lawyers should have been allowed to proceed with a specific argument that the judge precluded them from making.
The defense argument was tied to Touradji’s claims that Vollero and Beach had broken industry rules while working at his commodities fund, which Beach and Vollero denied.