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I am not a lawyer and know nothing about legalities surrounding trading stocks. I've heard of "insider trading" but know nothing about that.

Please forgive me for picking your brains.

How do you think we should go about checking to see if there was insider trading around the same time that Jerger Insurance being taken over by Philadelphia Consolidated?

And shortly before that, Jerger took over a company run by Steve Beaty...how could we find out if there was insider trading on that?

Or are those types of takeovers done in a way that there would have been no insider trading?

I'm not saying that anyone we've mentioned here on FR was involved in "insider trading" (whatever that is), I'm just asking a general question about persons unknown.

Florida Trend, Sept 2000 v43 i5 p16

Beaty, 41, started as an industry outsider with his own company, Micro Business Systems, providing software to independent agents. For Pinellas Park-based The Jerger Co., he developed a pioneering program that allowed it to quickly identify mobile homes by ZIP code and park. Thus, it could grow into the largest independent mobile home insurer in the Southeast, even as it spread its risk so that a single tornado didn't mean catastrophe for Jerger. In 1986, he sold Micro to Jerger and became its chief information officer. When Jerger was sold this year, Beaty jumped to Bankers.

If a company has publicly traded stock, then the people on the inside are not allowed to trade their stock using the knowledge they have because they are inside.

For example, if an insider knows that something is about to happen that will make the company more profitable, he is not allowed to go and buy up stock before the public announcement of the event, while the price is still low.

Conversely, if an insider knows that something bad is about to happen, he is not allowed to dump his stock before the public finds out about the problem and the price goes down.
That is what Martha Stewart got arrested for. I don't remember the precise details, but her friend Sam Waksal got word that the FDA was not going to approve some drug or process or something that Waksal's company owned, and which was supposed to be very profitable. He and his family dumped all their stock before the public could find out about the problem, and he supposedly gave Martha Stewart a heads up, and she sold hers. She avoided about $100,000 in losses by selling when she did, I think, but ended up jeopardizing a billion dollar company.

As to the company you're talking about, you'd first have to know if it is a publicly held company. Then you would have to know if the insiders did any stock trading before the event you're talking about.

Actually, as I think about the Martha Stewart thing, I'm note sure that her trades would violate the law, since she wasn't an insider, but got her information from an insider. As I think about it, I think her real legal problem is that she lied to investigators.

I took securities law, but have never practiced it, so I just understand broad concepts, not details.