Corporate Litigation: Scope of Federal Statutory Whistleblower Provisions
In his Corporate Litigation column published in the New York Law Journal, Joe McLaughlin writes about the scope of provisions in The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) protecting from retaliation employees who provide information regarding a violation of U.S. securities laws. The column examines a recent decision from the Northern District of California in Wadler v. Bio-Rad Laboratories, which held that directors who take retaliatory action against a whistleblower by voting in favor of that employee’s termination are subject to individual liability under both SOX and Dodd-Frank. Bio-Rad also illustrates that, in some jurisdictions, whistleblowers who report the violation internally but not to the SEC are fully protected under the Dodd-Frank Act.
Yafit Cohn, an associate at the Firm, assisted in the preparation of this article.