Grist for the Greenspan mill: A new witness steps up at the Livent trial

After a week’s interregnum, the Livent trial gears up again this morning with the cross-examination of former CFO Maria Messina. In her testimony to date, Messina more or less confirmed everything Livent’s other primary bean counter, Gord Eckstein, told the court about Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb’s alleged perpetual motion fraud machine. The difference highlighted by the Greenspans’ last ferocious cross-examination is that Eckstein is a pretty horrible guy: arrogant, mendacious and given to obscenity. Messina, on the other hand, has (so far) come off as saintly and long-suffering. She repeatedly testified that during her time at Livent she was “immobilized by fear” and that in preparing her memos revealing the fraud to new management, her hands shook so badly she had to get somebody else in the office to type it.

How Eddie Greenspan will tear down this carefully constructed edifice of innocence and incredulity is the trial’s newest $64,000 question. Greenspan recently subpoenaed and received all of Messina’s papers pertaining to Livent since she started working as a consultant to law firm Stikeman Elliott. If there are any skeletons in that closet, no doubt Eddie will commence rattling them today.