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The four-year-old memorabilia fraud lawsuit against the Giants and various other defendants finally will be going to trial. And one specific defendant will be facing an allegation of fraud: Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

Via Darren Rovell of ESPN.com, a pre-trial ruling from the presiding judge that determined which specific legal theories will and won’t go to trial resulted in a finding that sufficient evidence exists to support a verdict that Manning committed fraud. The summary judgment process explores whether a trial is necessary on one or more so-called genuine issues of material fact. If there’s no need for a jury to sift through testimony and documents and determine what happened at to some salient factual point, the judge can issue a ruling based solely on applying the law to facts that aren’t in dispute.

None of this means that Manning committed fraud. It only means that, after multiple years of searching for evidence, the plaintiffs have found enough proof to support a jury verdict that fraud was committed.

The case arises from game-used memorabilia that, according to the plaintiffs, wasn’t actually used in a game. Two key email messages that can be interpreted to reflect an attempt at passing off memorabilia not used in a game as game used likely aided the effort.