Jail? Probable. $60 million? Not quite.

That Dan Kamensky fucked up spectacularly and disastrously is at this point fairly well-attested. His bank thought his demand that they not drive up the price of an asset he hoped to buy from a bankrupt company on whose creditors committee he served was bad enough to turn him in. The U.S. bankruptcy and the judge overseeing the case were certainly not amused; neither were the Justice Department or Securities and Exchange Commission. Even Kamensky himself has acknowledged how deeply he stepped in it, calling his instruction to Jefferies to “STAND DOWN” a “grave mistake” likely to send him to prison, and certainly serious enough to shut down his Marble Ridge Capital hedge fund.

So, yes: A fuck-up, and probably a felonious fuck-up at that. But committing a crime and causing any actual harm are two different things. Neiman Marcus, which was not well-disposed toward Kamensky even before his little MyTheresa misadventure, certainly thinks there was actual harm—$60 million worth, in fact. Well, Marble Ridge—sorry as it is about the whole sordid state of affairs—isn’t quite so sure.

Marble Ridge Capital Master Fund, a onetime unit of the hedge fund tied up in litigation with Neiman Marcus, is urging a bankruptcy judge to reject the luxury retailer’s request to effectively freeze some of the master fund’s money…. The master fund argued in the filing that Neiman cannot show that Kamensky’s actions actually caused any loss to the company.

Marble Ridge unit says Neiman Marcus can’t prove losses in bankruptcy litigation [Reuters]