Within weeks, the Second and Third Circuits reached opposite conclusions over federal jurisdiction to confirm, modify or vacate arbitration awards. The Second Circuit now allows courts to look through the face of the petition to assess the federal-question jurisdictional merit of the underlying dispute; the Third Circuit doesn't (along with the DC and Seventh Circuits).
In 2009, the Supreme Court held the text of Section 4 of the Federal Arbitration Act required "look-through" assessment of the underlying dispute in motions to compel arbitration, based on the statute's text:
"A ...
The SEC announced its second enforcement action in a week against a company using severance or confidentiality agreements requiring employees to waive whistleblower bounties or their right to bring a qui tam action.
In this week's settled action, the SEC fined publicly-traded Health Net $340,000 for having used severance agreements (over 4 years) that expressly allowed government reporting and cooperation in investigations but required waiver of monetary awards and qui tam actions. The offending agreements included waivers of:
"the right to file an application for award for ...
The SEC has fined an Atlanta company $265,000 for using various severance agreements restricting whistleblower activities.
The Dodd-Frank Act added '34 Act § 21F encouraging whistleblower programs. The SEC adopted Rule 21F-17 providing:
(a) No person may take any action to impede an individual from communicating
directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation,
including enforcing, or threatening to enforce, a confidentiality agreement . . . with respect to such communications.
The Company's severance agreements contained confidentiality and ...
The D.C. Circuit has affirmed that SEC ALJs are not constitutional Officers subject to the Appointments Clause, rejecting perhaps the strongest of the constitutional challenges to the Commission's administrative forum. The ruling is the first case to decide the issue on its merits instead of rejecting it on procedural grounds (as the 2nd, 7th, 11th and D.C. Circuits previously did).
The Court held the Commission's right of discretionary review, coupled with the requirement to issue an affirmative order declining it (where not exercised), means its ALJs do not issue final ...
In a July 22 Notice, FINRA took umbrage at a growing line of Court decisions suggesting that a later or more-specific forum selection clause in an agreement between the parties may override a prior customer arbitration agreement. FINRA defended it arbitral forum, pointing out that members are subject to discipline for restricting a customer's right (or even request) to arbitrate.
An expanding line of precedent holds that a later forum-selection provision (limiting disputes to a particular court) may supersede a prior arbitration provision between the same two parties. See, e.g ...
The Federal Reserve announced on August 3, 2016, that it would fine Goldman Sachs $36.3 million in connection with a leak of confidential information from its New York branch. The leak was discovered and reported by Goldman Sachs in 2014 after Goldman learned that a junior executive had received information from a contact at the New York Fed. Both the junior executive and one of his supervisors were fired as a result.
The fine once again brings to bear the importance of maintaining and enforcing compliance programs. In addition to the clear benefits of having infrastructure in place to ...
In an August 1 release, the MSRB said it has scratched a proposed rule that would have required reporting of direct-purchases and bank loans by municipal issuers.
In the March concept release (MSRB Reg. Notice 2016-11) , the MSRB noted concerns that municipal borrowings in the form of direct purchases or bank loans increased the risk to investors in municipal securities if the other borrowings remained undisclosed. The Board's concept release proposed rule-making that would require municipal advisors and others to disclose such borrowings. That proposal, though, posed potential ...
This SRO gamesmanship is making a mockery of governing.
The latest is the SEC's position that it didn't take any action on the new MSRB Rules extending pay-to-play prohibitions to municipal advisors, so it can't be sued to stop the implementation of the regulations implemented by the MSRB under the SEC's jurisdiction. Making it only worse, the SEC says that it's because Congress prohibited the Agency from spending any money on this part of the Dodd-Frank mandate Congress required.
Whaaat?!? So hold onto your hat, as we go down the rabbit hole to explain this:
The MSRB: The SEC's ...
Last month, the 6th Circuit joined the majority view recognizing the "materialization of the risk" theory of loss-causation as an alternative to "corrective-disclosure" in securities litigation under Rule 10b-5.
The Public Securities Litigation Reform Act ("PSLRA") and federal jurisprudence (Tw-Iqbal) require pleading specific factual allegations of each element of Rule 10b-5 claim, including loss-causation (a proximate causal relationship between not merely the alleged misrepresentation or omission and the transaction, but also the plaintiffs' loss). Dura-Pharm