The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit pumped the brakes on a California law requiring the state’s biggest companies to disclose their climate change-related financial risks. The law, referred to by its legislative number, SB 261, was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.
At this year’s Association of Corporate Counsel Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, a panel of experienced in-house counsel walked through the high-stakes realities of internal investigations. The panel stressed that investigations are less about checking boxes and more about protecting people, reputations and companies.
This year has seen a wave of proposed bills in state legislatures across the United States aimed at regulating foreign-influenced political activity at the state level. While stylized to mirror portions of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), in reality, many of these laws are broader than FARA and lack the core exemptions that companies may have grown accustomed to relying upon.
By aligning with the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Van Buren v. United States,the Third Circuit emphasizes that the CFAA should not serve as a catchall enforcement tool for employers. The decision draws a clear boundary between criminal conduct and employment disputes, reinforcing that the CFAA is not a backdoor mechanism for punishing employees.
A functioning enforcement environment must prevent fraud without unduly hindering good business. While the future of FCA enforcement unfolds, all companies can proactively limit their risk by continuing to maintain robust compliance programs to detect and prevent misconduct.
Phillips is another in a line of decisions that expansively permit U.S. prosecutions for conduct taking place overseas, while paying little heed to the extra hardships imposed on defendants forced to defend themselves in a foreign courtroom.
A powerful incentive to rat out corporate misconduct waned in the latest fiscal year, as payouts under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Whistleblower Program fell to their lowest level in six years, a Law.com analysis found.
While whole swaths of white collar defense work are drying up under the Trump administration, law firms are redeploying or refocusing these attorneys to matters with rising demand, such as compliance counseling and civil litigation.
The best advice for SEC trend watchers might be summarized using the golf interjection, “fore!” The developments are happening so rapidly, one of the best things to do is to be aware that these shifts are incoming and stay alert to the changes.
The federal judiciary’s electronic case management system, known as CM/ECF, was hacked in large-scale cyberattacks this summer. Although court officials are mum on the possible perpetrators, news reports have said investigators suspect that the hacking could possibly have been perpetrated by Russian state-linked actors. The far-reaching breach has exposed the identities of cooperating witnesses and victims.
