MIAMI - Paul A. Calli, a shareholder in Carlton Fields’ Miami office, recently served as a panelist for the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law’s “Brown Bag” teleconferenced seminar entitled, “Discussing the Criminal Jury Trial in the Marine Hose Case.”

The teleconference focused on a criminal trial in which Calli, along with Carlton Fields shareholder Michael S. Pasano and associate Marissel Descalzo, were successful in securing an acquittal for Val M. Northcutt, who was a target of the marine hose investigation brought by the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ’s investigation into alleged price-fixing in the marine hose industry became public in 2007 and culminated in the arrests of eight foreign executives. Since then, three corporations have pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty in the investigation. Twelve individuals were also charged, nine of whom plead guilty. The charges against Northcutt were tried to a jury in November 2008 and after a four-week trial, the jury returned its “not guilty” verdict after only two hours of deliberation. Francesco Scaglia, another defendant in the case, was also acquitted at that trial.

Calli provided the defense perspective on the Northcutt case at the seminar.

The panel also included two members of the Government’s legal team.
During the teleconference, Calli explained how the Carlton Fields team worked diligently for 18 months to cull through enormous volumes of documents to build the defense theme that Northcutt was an outsider and not involved with antitrust conduct committed by the insiders to the bid rigging conspiracy, who had pled guilty and agreed to testify against Northcutt in exchange for reduced jail sentences. At the same time he conceded that the government’s evidence was difficult to overcome, in that the prosecution presented a secret video tape of a cartel meeting, faxes and emails between the coordinator of the conspiracy and Carlton Fields' client, and numerous witnesses who implicated Northcutt in purported misconduct.

“Fortunately, we were able to embrace evidence the Government perceived as favorable for the prosecution, and demonstrate how the evidence reflected our client’s innocence,” Calli said.

Calli is a member of Carlton Fields’ White Collar Crime and Government Investigations Practice Group. He practices primarily white collar criminal defense. He spent the early years of his career in the courtroom, having tried more than 75 cases to verdict as an Assistant State Public Defender and then as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Miami. Calli focuses his practice on the defense of federal White Collar grand jury investigations and prosecutions, such as labor and union disputes, health care regulatory issues, federal environmental matters, Department of Defense and other government contracts, federal antitrust, securities and election law cases, banking transactions, and tax controversies. He received his J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law and a B.A. in political science from the University of Connecticut.

For more information on this conference, please visit: http://www.abanet.org/antitrust/at-bb/audio/09/05-09.shtml

Please note that you must be a member of the ABA Section of Antitrust Law for full access to the audio conference.