[ by Howard Haykin] Barclays vs. the liquidator of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has been a long, arduous legal fight.  The battle between Barclays and Lehman had raged for more than 3 years, since Barclays bought the defunct investment bank’s North American business. But when dealing with billions at stake, the effort is worth it.  For Barclays, which won as much as $5.5 billion, "the end certainly justified the means."  It was on Tuesday that a federal judge in Manhattan told Lehman Brothers to pay Barclays what it owed, saying the final sale documents showed the parties’ true intent. James Giddens, the Lehman trustee, originally sought $7 billion from Barclays, saying he hadn’t read last-minute changes to the contract in the September 2008 chaos after the Lehman parent filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.  But U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ordered Mr. Giddens to pay London-based Barclays $1.1 billion and to renounce his claim to $1.5 billion in margin assets backing the trading operations that Barclays took over from Lehman. In confirming part of a lower-court decision, Forrest cost Mr. Giddens a total of $3.5 billion in margin and $2 billion in clearance-box assets, held to clear trades, the trustee said yesterday. The dueling between the second-biggest U.K. bank and Mr. Giddens, who also is liquidating the MF Global Inc. brokerage, followed a 2010 court trial before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck in Manhattan.  Both sides challenged Judge Peck’s order on the disputed assets, and Mr. Giddens said he plans to appeal Forrest’s ruling. Mr. Giddens remains adament that "the former customers of Lehman Brothers Inc. are entitled to these assets."  In an e-mail, he further stated: "Our duty to customers mandates that we continue to pursue all legal avenues to recover the assets." Barclays’s victory won’t help it in the U.S. Court of Appeals, said Stephen Lubben, a bankruptcy law professor at Seton Hall School of Law.  "Basically, they both start from square one" in a dispute over contract interpretation, and added, "this won’t be over until the Second Circuit weighs in." Mr. Giddens has reserved money for the Barclays litigation and still intends to pay some money to the brokerage’s creditors by the end of the year, he said.  "We are gratified by the court’s decision confirming that Barclays is entitled to the Lehman assets it purchased in September 2008," the bank’s litigation lawyer, Jonathan Schiller of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP. Sole Bidder. It's interesting to recall that Barclays was the sole bidder for Lehman’s business in the 2008 financial crisis.  It took over most of the brokerage’s retail customers. Hedge funds and other large creditors haven’t been paid yet.  Meanwhile, the Lehman parent is still buying and selling assets after exiting bankruptcy to pay creditors an average of about 18¢ on the dollar.  The defunct firm had sought an $11 billion "windfall" it alleged Barclays made on the 2008 purchase.  Mr. Peck rejected that demand and Lehman dropped its appeal of his ruling.  Lehman filed for bankruptcy with $613 billion in debt. The district court case is Giddens v. Barclays Capital Inc., 11-cv-06052, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). [Bloomberg, 6/6/12]