As the Wall Street adage goes, “Bulls and Bears Make Money…Pigs Get Slaughtered..” The folks here at BrokerDealer.com could not resist re-distributing the news about former Lehman trader Jonathan Hoffman and his smack down by Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Shelly Chapman, who ruled that double-dipping isn’t good form and Mr. Hoffman must be bonkers if he believes the Lehman estate should pay him a past-due $83mil bonus–which was the exact amount Lehman’s subsequent owner Barclays paid to Hoffman when he joined that acquiring bank.

The only thing Judge Chapman neglected to add (also overlooked by DealBreaker’s Bess Levin-who published the below) was a reference to Donald Trump’s recent metaphorical comments on the topic of double-dipping..  We says this was an oversight on Judge Chapman’s part only because of the wit in her writ.  We can’t explain how gossip writer and social media actress Bess Levin overlooked the joke, simply because she should know better: Any fun story gets much more distance these days whenever inserting Trump’s name into the narrative.

Here’s Bess Levin’s ‘editorial take’…

Remember Jonathan Hoffman? Former Lehman Brothers trader who later took a job with Barclays, who decided in 2014 that he wanted to figuratively demonstrate the size of his testicles to the world by making the case that although the British paid him an $83 million bonus upon joining the firm, Lehman separately owed him that exact same amount, which he sued the estate to collect? Based on the argument that unlike many of the Lehman employees who were simply taken in by Barclays following the collapse of the investment bank, he could have gotten a job anywhere and chose to join Barclays, with whom he entered into a new contract, separate from the one he had with Lehman? And that the $83 million they paid him was kind of just like a signing bonus, and didn’t let his former employer off the hook? A judge told him Friday to sit down and shut up.

Judge Shelley Chapman of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York said former top trader Jonathan Hoffman is entitled to only about $7.7 million stemming from an unpaid portion of the bonus he was awarded in 2007. Furthermore, Mr. Hoffman will receive only 35 cents on the dollar for the bonus. “Mr. Hoffman was a gifted trader who generated billions of dollars in profits for Lehman over the course of his employment,” Judge Chapman said in an 87-page decision Thursday. But she characterized as “pure nonsense” the Wall Street veteran’s argument that Lehman owed him more than $83 million, even though he had received a similar amount from Barclays PLC. The judge said Lehman’s obligation to pay Mr. Hoffman’s bonus was transferred to Barclays PLC when it bought Lehman shortly after the failed investment bank filed for bankruptcy. Barclays agreed to pay the $83 million and to copy other key terms of his employment agreement with Lehman.’

The entire article can be found at DealBreaker.com