Steven A. Cohen and SAC Capital Advisors won their bid to be dropped from an $8bn lawsuit accusing them and other hedge funds of spreading negative information to drive down Fairfax Financial Holdings' stock price.  New Jersey Superior Court Judge Stephan Hansbury granted the request that he rule in their favor without the need of a trial. Fairfax, a Toronto-based insurer, sued the hedge funds in 2006, accusing them of taking action to harm the company because they were betting its stock price would decline. The hedge funds named in the suit include James Chanos’s Kynikos Associates and Daniel Loeb’s Third Point.  All have denied Fairfax’s accusations. The funds coaxed John Gwynn, a former insurance analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, TN, into giving them his negative Fairfax reports before they were published, Fairfax's lawyer charged. He added that they disseminated false information about the company to the media, the government and ratings services. In December 2003 and January 2004, when Fairfax said that SAC Capital was "shorting" the stock in anticipation of Gwynn’s first report, SAC Capital was actually eliminating its short position and buying the stock, SAC's attorney said. SAC Capital held a long Fairfax position for most of 2004 and no Fairfax position in 2005. It was during that year that the funds allegedly hired an outside analyst, Spyro Contogouris, to spread false Fairfax information.  Fairfax's lawyer argued that SAC Capital, which has $14 billion under management, didn’t include certain trading in Fairfax in its calculations.  [Bloomberg, 9/14/11]