Court Grants Request by Quattrone to Seal Letters

Former Credit Suisse First Boston banker Frank Quattrone, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week, won a ruling Tuesday that temporarily sealed letters relatives and friends sent to the judge in his case seeking leniency.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan granted Quattrone’s emergency request to seal the letters after he said they contained personal details about the health of his wife and 15-year-old daughter.

The ruling “means that the letters containing private information about Mr. Quattrone’s family will be sealed at least until the court acts on the merits” of his bid to keep them permanently confidential, said Robert Chlopak, a spokesman for Quattrone.

In a legal filing Monday, Quattrone said U.S. District Judge Richard Owen, who presided over the trial, was guilty of a “stunning display of judicial callousness and insensitivity” for his “cavalier dismissal” of the health problems experienced by Quattrone’s wife and daughter.

At one point during the sentencing last week, Owen said that Quattrone’s daughter “sounds to me like a perfectly normal girl.”

He then made a series of comments disclosing medical information that Quattrone had sought to keep secret.

Quattrone, 48, was convicted in May of obstructing justice after a second trial on the charges. The first one last year ended in a hung jury. Owen presided at both.