In this Aaron Lucchetti piece($), the Wall Street Journal continues its fine coverage (see Peter Lattman posts here, here and here) of the Lord of Regulation‘s ongoing lawsuit against Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone and former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso over Grasso’s supposedly excessive NYSE compensation package and Langone’s support of it.
Lucchetti reports today that Spitzer and Langone are preparing for Langone’s deposition next week (wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall of that one), and notes that Spitzer’s already dubious case against Langone is now boiling down to whether Langone misled fellow NYSE directors by including a part of Grasso’s compensation plan in a footnote of a memo to directors rather than in the body of the memo:

“The footnote on this work sheet could be more clear, but I do believe the committee understood,” [former NYSE human-resources director Frank] Ashen said in the deposition regarding the $18 million in bonus payments. Those payments were made in a “Capital Accumulation Plan” that was established for several NYSE executives in addition to Mr. Grasso.
Mr. Spitzer’s complaint argues that the CAP awards never should have been put into a footnote but should have been included in the work sheet’s “total compensation” column. The complaint specifically cites the compensation work sheet for 1999, saying it doesn’t make clear that the CAP award for that year was paid in addition to the figure identified on the work sheet as Mr. Grasso’s total compensation. . .
Mr. Spitzer’s lawsuit calls for Mr. Langone to “make restitution” to the NYSE for the amount paid to Mr. Grasso that the suit alleges he didn’t properly disclose — in other words, the $18 million. Mr. Langone’s response, in a statement yesterday: “He hasn’t laid a glove on me.”

The trial of the Grasso-Langone case is currently scheduled for late October, so stay tuned. Larry Ribstein comments here on the corporate governance implications of the lawsuit.