AdvisorHub (February 27, 2017) - A former pharmaceutical executive serving an 18-year manslaughter sentence is battling to bring a $37 million arbitration claim against Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith after failing at attempts to sue her broker.

Gigi Jordan petitioned a federal judge in Delaware last month to authorize her arbitration effort, but Merrill says she is violating legal procedures in a last-ditch bid for money after her claims against the broker were dismissed.

At a hearing last Thursday over Merrill’s bid for a preliminary injunction to block the unusual request for a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration, Merrill said she has waived her right to arbitration after years of litigation, according to published reports and court documents. It also argued that Jordan is exploiting confidential information from her court proceedings to support the arbitration bid.

Jordan, who in 1997 sold her company Ambulatory Pharmaceutical Services for $34 million, was sentenced in 2015 for the 2010 death of her autistic eight-year-old son through a medication overdose.

In two cases in 2012 and 2013 she sued her former Merrill broker Patrick Walsh over fraud and other claims for allegedly conspiring with her ex-husband to get access to $17.5 million from her Merrill accounts. The firm was not named in the lawsuits, which are continuing against her former spouse and other parties.

U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson, who is expected to rule any day on Merrill’s request, has appeared sympathetic to Merrill’s assertions that Jordan’s claims for arbitration are based on documents that are protected from use in other forums. In late January, the judge approved a temporary restraining order against her proceeding with the claims.

Even if Jordan succeeds in bringing the case to arbitration, her criminal conviction and facts of her case would likely weigh against her in a Finra arbitration where arbitrators’ emotions can be more easily played upon than at a trial, said Andrew Stoltmann, president-elect of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, which represents plaintiffs against firms and brokers. He also said that Merrill would be able to cite circumstances of her felony case because “rules of evidence are more lax” in arbitration.

Jordan’s lawyers have argued that even if she committed technical violations involving “privileged” documents, Merrill should not be be immune from complaints of failing to supervise its broker and participating in fraud when money was moved from her accounts.

Her lawyers did not return calls for comment and a Merrill spokesman declined to comment.