On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued an opinion that may have sweeping implications for whistleblowers and employers.  In Lawson v. FMR LLC, the Court decided that the anti-retaliation provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (18 U.S.C. § 1514A) allows an employee to bring a claim even if that employee works for a private contractor or subcontractor of a public company.  The Court’s decision could lead to a wide range of Sarbanes-Oxley lawsuits by outside counsel, private accountants, cleaning services, and others.

Lawson was a split decision.  Justice Ginsburg, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Breyer, and Justice Kagan, and by Justices Scalia and Thomas “in principal part,” wrote for the majority.  Justice Scalia wrote a separate concurrence, joined by Justice Thomas.  And in an unusual grouping, Justice Sotomayor authored the dissent, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.  Today, we'll tackle Justice Ginsburg's opinion; tomorrow, we'll take a look at what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had to say.

But first, a little background.

• Civil Litigation
• Motions to Dismiss
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• Whistleblowers

Yesterday, we reviewed a recent decision by a federal court in Richmond in the case of Vanterpool v. Cuccinelli (yes that one), and when firing a government employee for speech or political affiliation may be okay under the First Amendment.  The answer is that it may be okay if the employee is in a policymaking position.  The court’s decision spells out why and what it means to have such a position.  The case is also a helpful reminder that staking out one position in litigation may undermine another. 

In her first complaint, Vanterpool apparently did not want to say that she posted the comment criticizing Cuccinelli on the Washington Post because she had denied doing so when she was confronted about the comment by one of Cuccinelli’s deputies, Charles E. James, Jr., who was also a defendant in the case.  James later questioned Vanterpool’s credibility and asked her to resign or be terminated.  If Vanterpool alleged in the complaint that she personally posted the comment, then that could have bolstered a defense by Cuccinelli and James that she wasn’t fired for speaking freely but for being dishonest.    

• Civil Litigation
• First Amendment
• Government Employers and Employees
• Motions to Dismiss
• Social Media

Earlier this month, a federal court in Richmond dismissed the lawsuit  of a lawyer named Samantha Vanterpool who worked in the Virginia Office of Attorney General when Republican Ken Cuccinelli was Virginia’s AG and was running to be governor.  (Democrat Terry McAuliffe won last November in a race that made national headlines.)  Vanterpool claimed that she was fired on the basis of her political affiliation in violation of the First Amendment. 

Vanterpool is a Republican but apparently not a Cuccinelli fan.  She was fired after she allegedly posted a comment to a May 2012 Washington Post story about Bill Bolling, who was then challenging Cuccinelli for the Republican nomination.  You can still see the comment (from “bzbzsammy”), which accuses “Cuccinelli of promoting Cuccinelli” while “Bolling is helping the GOP,” and of “NEVER [being] in the AG’s office and solely us[ing] the position for self promotion.”  

• Civil Litigation
• First Amendment
• Government Employers and Employees
• Motions to Dismiss
• Social Media

Our state and federal courts generally have two levels of courts: trial and appellate courts.  The archetypal trial court is the knock-down, drag-out venue of TV drama, where judges issue quick rulings and juries weigh the testimony and documents to make their mysterious decisions.  Appellate courts are much more monastic (and thus, much less entertaining for TV’s purposes).  There, learned panels of esteemed judges review cold court records and legal tomes, reviewing the parties’ arguments and applying the law in order to reach their thoughtful and detailed decisions.

Appellate courts may not even entertain every argument that a party seeks to make.  For the most part, to argue in the appellate court that the trial court made a mistake, a litigant has to “preserve” the error below – meaning that the litigant must give the trial court the opportunity to rule on the issue in the first instance.  The failure to preserve error has tripped up many an appeal.

The case of Jeff Gennarelli, the former regional vice president of American Bank and Trust Company (ABT), gives us yet another example of this stumbling block. 

• Breach of Contract
• Civil Litigation
• Confidentiality
• Noncompete Agreements ‎

A few days before Alex Rodriguez filed his Complaint against Major League Baseball (and, somewhat surprisingly, the Major League Baseball Players Association, his own union), we set out the basic legal framework that will govern A-Rod’s efforts to overturn the arbitration award suspending him for the entire 2014 season.  Now, I’m a baseball lawyer, so obviously I had a unique interest in this particular case, but I also continue to think that the A-Rod case is instructive in the larger context that we write about here at Suits by Suits.

Specifically, A-Rod isn’t just one of the most famous – or infamous, depending on your perspective – baseball players in the world; he’s an employee having a very well-publicized dispute with his employers.  The law that governs A-Rod’s attempts to vacate Fredric Horowitz’s arbitration award is the exact same law that would apply to virtually any private sector employee whose employment-related dispute is governed by arbitration; namely, the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.

So, what does A-Rod’s complaint have to teach us as employers or employees?  One thing it can do is to emphasize the importance of reading a complaint backwards.  Read on to discover why.

• Breach of Contract
• Civil Litigation

In Part 1 of this post, we looked at a heated executive employment dispute that is being tried in Dallas.  The case involves a former hedge fund executive, sued by his former employer for allegedly not returning 59,000 confidential documents when he resigned and for trying to poach the firm’s clients.  The Dallas Morning News has full coverage here and here. 

The trial is forcing both sides to air things about the other – and themselves – that they would likely not want raised in a public forum.  In Part 1, for example, we noted how Highland executives testified that a compensation program had to be stopped after the executive, Daugherty, left the firm, because (as the Dallas Morning News put it) Daugherty “engaged in conflict of interest transactions” for the compensation program.  Surely Highland would rather not have raised that issue publicly.  But that’s what aggressive litigation sometimes forces parties to have to do to win their case – which is the cautionary tale of the Highland v. Daugherty trial.  

• Breach of Contract
• Civil Litigation
• Defamation
• Severance Agreements

Many of the executive employment disputes we write about focus on one or two key issues – the enforcement of a non-compete clause in an employment agreement, for instance, or the odd ways a severance package can work. 

A case being heard in Dallas, however, brings together a whole set of executive-employment-related problems in one place: alleged defamation, corporate confidential information allegedly not returned by a departing executive in breach of a written employment agreement, compensation demands and agreements that were never put in writing, and an executive’s desire to work part-time from home.  Throw in alleged self-dealing and conflict of interest allegations against the executive – who ran a specialty investment team at the employer, a large hedge fund – and you have the sort of intense, angry dispute that used to be featured on a soap opera set in Dallas that captivated the nation in the 1980s. 

Without, of course, the famous shower scene.  

• Breach of Contract
• Civil Litigation
• Defamation
• Severance Agreements

No, this headline is not a pun about the closed on-ramps to the George Washington Bridge.  Rather, it’s meant to acknowledge that as the New Year gets into full swing, folks are starting to ramp up their analysis of ongoing issues in disputes that involve executives and their employers.  We’ve seen a number of interesting stories and summaries cross our desk:

• Ben James of Law360 published a thorough recap of the lingering questions about Dodd-Frank’s whistleblower protections.  We’ve got one more question: will the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Lawson v. FMR LLC (we covered the oral argument here) affect a whistleblower’s choice between initially pursuing a Dodd-Frank claim in federal court, or filing a Sarbanes-Oxley claim with the Department of Labor?  Right now, some courts are putting a narrow construction on who can sue under Dodd-Frank, so if the Lawson Court takes an expansive view of Sarbanes-Oxley, it may give new life to that statute as an appealing option for whistleblowers.

• What’s not ramping up: romance in the home of the new president of Alabama State University.  Debra Cassins Weiss of ABA Journal reports that Gwendolyn Boyd, who is single, will not be allowed to “cohabit with a romantic partner in the university residence so long as she is single,” according to her employment contract.  Boyd says she has “no issue” with the provision.  Sorry, suitors.  (Which, by the way, would be a good name for our group of loyal readers.)

• Breach of Contract
• Civil Litigation
• Executive Compensation
• The Inbox

Ah, the smells of the holiday season: fresh-cut evergreen trees, just-baked cookies and other goodies, bowls of tasty fruit punch.  Take a deep whiff wherever you are.  Breathe it in deep. 

But be careful about sniffing those smells, though. 

That is the apparent lesson from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Tonia Royal’s retaliation lawsuit against her employer, an apartment management company named CCC&R Tres Arboles.  The appellate court held that the trial court incorrectly gave the apartment company summary judgment, because too many material facts about the basis for Ms. Royal’s firing were in dispute.  And many of those facts relate to the behavior of other CCC&R employees, who Ms. Royal alleged sexually harassed her by sniffing her in a rather curious and uncomfortable manner.  

• Civil Litigation
• Discrimination
• Summary Judgment
• Wrongful Termination

Companies prize their formulas for best-selling products like nothing else.  Visitors to the World of Coca-Cola can visit the vault holding the soda syrup recipe.  And KFC’s fried chicken seasoning method has been described as one of its most valuable assets.

NuScience Corporation makes the skin product CELLFOOD, which it describes as an “oxygen and nutrient supplement” using “proprietary water-splitting technology.”  And as recounted by the California Court of Appeal in a recent opinion, NuScience  has fought hard to keep the CELLFOOD formula secret.  The California court’s decision addressed an unusual spinoff of NuScience’s trade secret battle: a malicious prosecution complaint filed by a former employee, David McKinney, who alleged that NuScience wrongfully brought a prior racketeering and misappropriation case against him.  See McKinney v. NuScience Corp., No. B240831 c/w B244074 (Cal. Ct. App. 2013).

According to the court, most of NuScience’s trade secret troubles involved the Henkel family – father John and sons Michael and Robert – who found a copy of the CELLFOOD formula after it had been purchased by NuScience.  After discovering the formula, the Henkels then repeatedly sought to sell it to other buyers, get money from NuScience to hand it over, or sell a competing product.  NuScience won federal court injunctions against the Henkels, but Michael and Robert didn’t stop their efforts.  And after NuScience fired McKinney, its vice president of sales and marketing, the Henkels got him involved in their efforts to discredit NuScience and use the formula.  NuScience then filed its racketeering lawsuit against McKinney and Robert Henkel, alleging that the two engaged in a conspiracy to disparage CELLFOOD and violate the federal judgment against Robert.  NuScience eventually dismissed that case without prejudice, asserting that it did so because Robert was threatening to disclose the CELLFOOD formula.

McKinney then filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit based on NuScience’s decision to voluntarily give up the case.  However, NuScience quickly moved to strike his lawsuit based on California’s anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16). 

• Civil Litigation
• Trade Secrets