Three jurors participating in the suit against Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley brought by financier Ron Perelman reported that a client of one of Mr. Perelman’s top litigators approached them with queries about the matter. This was revealed in the note sent to Florida State Judge Elizabeth Maass from jurors numbered 6,8 and 9 in the court records. The fact could lead to a mistrial.

"It was very obvious from the questions he was asking he was trying to get information from us," one of the jurors told the judge. The man asked if the trio were hearing the Morgan Stanley case. "He kept talking and asking us questions," the juror said.

The description most closely resembles Jack Scarola, a client of Perelman lawyer, who said in a statement: "I have no idea whether the individual who unsuccessfully sought to engage three of our jurors in conversation was one of my clients. What I do know is that if such an incident occurred, no one associated with Mr. Perelman or Mr. Perelman’s legal team had anything whatsoever to do with it."

Morgan Stanley is now asking for a mistrial in the light of the newly revealed facts,and the plaintiff’s lawyers have asked to remove the three jurors from the jury.

Mr. Perelman accuses Morgan Stanley of hiding from him the accounting problems at Sunbeam Corp., the appliance-making company to which Mr. Perelman sold his stake in Coleman Inc. in 1998. The value of the $1.5 billion stake was slashed after the accounting scandal broke out at Sunbeam Corp.