California Attorney General Kamala Harris and the liquidator of Bernard Madoff’s defunct firm will hold talks seeking to end a deadlock over Harris’s $270 million lawsuit against an alleged beneficiary of the Ponzi scheme. The two sides will use mediation to pursue a settlement, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland said today at a hearing in Manhattan. Madoff trustee Irving Picard had asked Lifland to stop Harris’s suit against Stanley Chais’s estate, saying only the trustee can collect money for Madoff’s Ponzi victims. Harris contends her suit can proceed because she’s using her state policing power to protect consumers from fraud. Read Bloomberg report here.
