Recent developments involving the first two whistleblower cases to go to trial under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have sent mixed signals to individuals who might feel they were unfairly punished for alerting authorities to possible fraud, as well as to companies that might be targets of such complaints.
In early October, a U.S. district judge decided not to enforce a Department of Labor ruling ordering a Virginia bank to reinstate David Welch, the former chief financial officer of Cardinal Bankshares and the first worker to win protection as a whistleblower under SOX. He had filed a complaint in the district court in Roanoke, Va., to force the bank to comply with an earlier order of reinstatement.
