Regulatory Enforcement

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 […]

A federal judge has dismissed a securities fraud lawsuit against the former chief executive officer of computer manufacturer Gateway, a rare rebuke of the Securities and Exchange Commission that underscores how fraud cases have evolved since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. San Diego District Court Judge Roger Benitez granted summary judgment late last month in favor of […]

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 […]

When federal regulators recently concluded that home mortgage giant Fannie Mae had executed a $10.6 billion accounting fraud, regulators at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight vowed to seek forfeiture of any fraudulent gains from the Fannie Mae executives who concocted the scheme. Don’t count on them wresting money away from Fannie executives using […]

Some recent court cases may be indicators that the tide is turning back in favor of the once-common practice of advancing legal fees to employees entangled in government investigations, which had appeared to be under fire by federal prosecutors in recent years. With the decisions, legal experts say, U.S. courts appear to be taking a […]

It can be lonely at the top for corporate executives—figuratively and, when the C-suite comes under investigation, legally. Although executives may be inclined to view the general counsel as their ally, attorneys inside and outside the corporation represent only the company, not individual executives. The point may seem obvious to some, but it’s one that […]

A federal appeals court loosened the sentencing standards last month for criminal defendants who cooperate with government authorities—even if prosecutors don’t ask for leniency when judges dole out a sentence. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, ruling in the case of a woman who cooperated with federal prosecutors in a narcotics probe, […]