Generally speaking, you would think that if the moans and groans of a fellow exerciser were bothering you at the gym, you should not be allowed to walk over and throw him – and his stationary bike – into the wall. However, a jury weighing the assault charges against a stockbroker by bigwig investment executive Stuart Sugarman begged to differ.

Christopher Carter, a stockbroker who was charged with assault after confronting a noisy gym customer during a spinning class in an Upper East Side fitness club last summer, was found not guilty of assault in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday afternoon.

A jury, which began deliberating last week, cleared Mr. Carter, 45, on the assault charge, a misdemeanor that could have resulted in a year in prison. On Aug. 15, 2007, prosecutors said, Mr. Carter was two bikes away from Stuart Sugarman, in a spinning class at the gym, an Equinox sports club. By all accounts, Mr. Sugarman, a senior partner at an investment firm, was grunting, groaning and shouting, issuing exclamations like “You go girl!” Mr. Carter upended Mr. Sugarman’s exercise bicycle. Mr. Sugarman said Mr. Carter grabbed the bike by the handlebars, raised the front end off the ground, driving the rear of the bike into a wall, and then let the bike go. Mr. Sugarman, now 49, spent two weeks in a hospital and said the injury has caused him chronic neck and back pain.

After the verdict, jurors seemed to sympathize with Mr. Carter’s frustration.

“I probably would have helped Carter with telling the instructor, ‘Look at this guy. He’s being a nuisance,’” said one juror, Marybeth Roman, a 20-year-old student at the College of Staten Island who lives on the Lower East Side.

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