Business

Another legal headache for SAC’s Cohen

As if hedge fund titan Steve Cohen didn’t have enough legal woes.

The billionaire founder of SAC Capital — who is busy dealing with a federal insider-trading investigation and a bitter court battle with his ex-wife — has been hit with an appeal in a $6 billion racketeering case brought by insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings.

On Friday, Fairfax asked New Jersey’s state appeals court to revive the case, which alleges a conspiracy by SAC and other hedge funds to drive down the insurer’s stock price a decade ago.

Toronto-based Fairfax claims that SAC and other hedge funds traded on illegal inside information, including advance notice of a Wall Street research report that was expected to drive down Fairfax ’s stock.

SAC won a dismissal of the Fairfax lawsuit in 2011, after New Jersey Superior Court Judge Stephan Hansbury determined there was “no direct evidence of any sort of conspiracy involving SAC to take down Fairfax.”

To get the case tossed, SAC’s lawyers argued that the firm’s trading records didn’t support allegations that the hedge fund was shorting the stock ahead of the research note.

In the appeal, Fairfax said it should be left to a jury to decide such “hotly contested questions of material fact.”

“The trial court thoroughly rejected Fairfax’s claims, and we are confident its decision will be upheld,” an SAC spokesman said.

Other hedge funds named in the lawsuit, including Jim Chanos’ Kynikos Associates and Dan Loeb’s Third Point, also won dismissals.

The appeal is just the latest legal thorn in Cohen’s side. He was recently subpoenaed, along with several other top executives, to testify before a grand jury in the government’s multi-year investigation of his hedge-fund empire.

SAC also is said to be bracing for clients to withdraw another $3.5 billion from the fund amid the probe, on top of $1.7 billion in the first quarter, WSJ.com said.

kwhitehouse@nypost.com