“This effort to depose Brian Moynihan is for harassment purposes.” If Bransten allowed the deposition in MBIA’s case, other bond insurers suing Countrywide would “seek their own shot,” the O’Melveny lawyer said, which “would clearly be disruptive to the business of Bank of America to lose their CEO to substantial time in prepping for and taking depositions.” “There’s no basis to say they have to have Brian Moynihan when they have access to all these other people,” including former BofA CEO Ken Lewis, Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg displayed a slide that showed all of BofA’s “enormous operations,” which he said demanded “24/7 work from senior executives, especially the CEO.” MBIA’s insistence on taking testimony from Moynihan, when BofA has already offered up for deposition several senior bank executives with the same knowledge as the CEO, amounts to harassment, according to BofA.

He’s also a very busy man, said Jonathan Rosenberg of O’Melveny. judge chides Cobell lawyers for trying to squelch appealĪccording to the transcript of a hearing on the issue last Friday morning before Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten, the bank’s lawyers at O’Melveny & Myers said that under the so-called Apex rule - which essentially says that high-ranking executives shouldn’t have to waste their time responding to deposition questions that lesser-ranking officials can answer just as well - Moynihan should be shielded from testifying because he doesn’t have unique personal knowledge of the disputed facts in the case.

Boston legal jibber jabber