By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ryan Cohen, the billionaire chief executive of GameStop, must face a lawsuit by the company once known as Bed Bath & Beyond to recoup $47.2 million of profit from trading its stock before the home goods retailer went bankrupt.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan on Friday said Cohen and his RC Ventures must defend against a claim they bought and sold a more than 10% Bed Bath stake within six months, making them liable as insiders to repay “short-swing” profits.
Cohen claimed he did not know his stake topped 10% when he invested in March 2022, because the retailer was quietly repurchasing its own stock.
But the judge said Bed Bath had disclosed its buyback program, and it “strains credulity” that Cohen would invest so heavily without reviewing its disclosures to investors.
Cohen abruptly sold his Bed Bath stake in August 2022, for an estimated $60 million profit.
Lawyers for Cohen did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. The plaintiff’s lawyer and GameStop did not immediately respond to similar requests. GameStop, the video game retailer, is not a defendant.
Buchwald also dismissed a claim that the defendants were liable as “directors by deputization” because they had won three Bed Bath board seats in exchange for avoiding a proxy fight.
Cohen became known as “meme king” to ordinary investors who drove the early 2021 meme stock craze, typically in online forums.
He is worth $4.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, and also founded online pet supplies retailer Chewy.
Bed Bath filed for bankruptcy in April 2023. The online retailer Overstock.com later acquired its name and trademarks, and is known as Beyond.
Last June, another judge dismissed a lawsuit by former Bed Bath shareholders over Cohen’s profits, because the bankruptcy mooted their claims.
The case is 20230930-DK-Butterfly-1 Inc v Cohen et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 24-05874.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul)
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