Reason no. 229 why it's awesome to be a billionaire: the ability to speed up lawsuits filed against you by the federal government.

Bloomberg reports today that billionaire Mark Cuban, a defendant in a high-profile SEC insider trading case, has offered to provide the federal government with whatever funds are necessary to speed up the SEC's review of certain documents in his case. Hopefully there will be more coming out on this as the story is still a bit unclear. For now, however, it looks like an effort to create the litigation equivalent of the HOT lanes now under construction around the Capital Beltway in DC that will soon allow people who pay a toll to travel in a traffic-free lane.

Cuban's lawyer, Stephen Best, told the court that the federal government often hired contractors, and Cuban's offer to pay for such contract lawyers was a creative attempt to encourage the SEC to do so in his case.

Cuban has requested a massive number of documents under FOIA, which the SEC must review before producing. The current schedule reportedly calls for the documents to be delivered to Cuban in March 2012, a deadline that Cuban wants to move up by paying for the additional document reviewing manpower.

Bloomberg reports that the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton in D.C., asked the SEC to review whether Cuban's proposal to bring in contract attorneys for the task might violate federal hiring procedures or improperly reveal classified documents to the contractors. One of the SEC's lawyers also expressed concern that people like Cuban with “deep pockets would come in and go to the front of the line.”