Who doesn’t like all-expense-paid trips to the Atlantis Resort, the Venetian Hotel, or the Wintergreen Resort? A recent decision from a federal court of appeals gives us the answer: Jeffrey Wiest, an accountant for Tyco Electronics Corporation.
In Wiest v. Lynch, the Third Circuit tackled Wiest’s whistleblower claim, brought after he refused to approve corporate expenditures for conferences at luxurious lodgings.
Earlier this month, we blogged about an important decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Bechtel v. Administrative Review Board, a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case. In Bechtel, thecourt upheld the Department of Labor’s denial of a whistleblower claim, even though it found that the administrative law judge (“ALJ”) had applied the wrong legal standard.
So how did the ALJ get the law wrong?
To understand the ALJ’s error, it’s important to understand how the governing law defines the burden of proof in a Sarbanes-Oxley case.
Based on the statistics, it is nearly impossible to win a whistleblower claim brought under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In 2010, the Center for Public Integrity wrote that the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers those claims, had only upheld 25 out of the 1,091 claims brought since the Act was passed in 2002. That’s only a 2% success rate.
Although Scott Bechtel’s case took a longer path than most, it is now another statistic on the side of failure.
As the regulatory and business environments in which our clients operate grow increasingly complex, we identify and offer perspectives on significant legal developments affecting businesses, organizations, and individuals. Each post aims to address timely issues and trends by evaluating impactful decisions, sharing observations of key enforcement changes, or distilling best practices drawn from experience. InsightZS also features personal interest pieces about the impact of our legal work in our communities and about associate life at Zuckerman Spaeder.
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