Regulatory Enforcement

Following what some praise as a landmark ruling where a federal judge blasted the tactics of government prosecutors and struck down crucial portions of the so-called Thompson Memo, the legal world is abuzz over the implications of the case, and some are pushing the Justice Department to modify its guidance to prosecutors. The decision, handed […]

Maybe whistleblowing isn’t that painful on corporate ears after all. Four years after Congress enacted Sarbanes-Oxley and established Section 806—which protects employees from retaliation if they raise complaints about a company’s compliance with securities law—legal experts say the whistleblower provision can be a nuisance, especially when workers abuse its protections. Overall, however, as court cases […]

The battle over whether companies that agree to turn over documents to the government have waived all attorney-client and work-product privileges seems to be turning from the courts to Congress. Last month, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver became the latest appellate court to reject a company’s arguments—in this case, Qwest Communications—that privileges […]

With the first criminal and civil charges now filed against executives accused of manipulating the timing of stock option grants, federal prosecutors and regulators have sent a stern message to companies ensnared in backdating investigations: Clean up your act, or we’ll do it for you. Reyes Last Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI […]

No executive wants an investigation into wrongdoing at his company to end poorly. The key to avoiding that fate, legal specialists say, is to be sure the company’s own internal investigation starts strongly. If done properly, an internal investigation “can go a long way to persuading the government that a company should not be prosecuted,” […]

Electronic discovery has long flummoxed companies in litigation, as they struggle to decide which documents they should save and which ones can be safely destroyed, either in the paper shredder or on a reformatted hard drive. Now a brave new world looms in the form of much-needed changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure—which […]

In a first-of-its-kind decision sure to please executives under investigation everywhere, a federal judge has slapped down prosecutors for pressuring KPMG to cut off legal support to 16 employees indicted for selling illegal tax shelters. In a New York federal court, Judge Lewis Kaplan said that KPMG refused to pay its employees’ legal bills “because […]

Bad news for corporate executives running low on antacid: The onslaught of lawyers since Sarbanes-Oxley was passed four years ago will not stop any time soon. According to a recent survey by staffing firm Robert Half Legal of 300 attorneys at the 1,000 largest law firms and corporations in the United States and Canada, “ethics […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission fired another shot across the bow of the securities industry last month, and this time decided to use a new weapon in its arsenal. A Los Angeles brokerage firm, Crowell, Weedon & Co., became the first company to be sanctioned by the SEC under the USA Patriot Act—yes, that Patriot […]

As with many things Sarbanes-Oxley, barrels of ink were used to describe the law’s effect on records management until about 2003. Then there was relative silence—as if Sarbanes-Oxley somehow went away, or was revised with a giant “never mind” with respect to record retention. The impression is misleading. SOX is far from the only compliance […]