False Claims Act Insights - How a Marine Fisheries Dispute Opened an FCA Can of Worms
False Claims Act Insights - If Everything Matters, Nothing Does: Parsing Materiality in FCA Disputes
Podcast: Non-binding Guidance: SEC Disclosure Issues for Life Sciences Companies
Life Sciences Quarterly (Q3 2019): SEC Enforcement and Class Actions Regarding FDA Communications
A recent ruling may raise the bar for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in charging registered investment advisers for omissions of potential conflicts and seeking disgorgement, giving the defense bar additional...more
On April 17, 2025, three operating divisions (the “Operating Divisions”) of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) and the Division of Enforcement (“DOE”) provided guidance in CFTC Letter 25-13 (the...more
On April 1, 2025, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a nearly $95 million judgment against our client Commonwealth Financial Network related to the sufficiency of Commonwealth’s revenue-sharing disclosures. The First...more
On April 17, 2025, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Market Participants Division (MPD), the Division of Clearing and Risk (DCR), and the Division of Market Oversight (DMO)—collectively the Operating...more
The three operating divisions of the CFTC (Division of Market Oversight, Market Participants Division, and the Division of Clearing and Risk, together the Operating Divisions) issued an advisory on April 17, explaining the...more
On April 17, 2025, three operating divisions of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued an advisory to provide guidance on the materiality or other criteria they will use in deciding whether to make a...more
On April 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated a summary judgment ruling in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Commonwealth Equity Services, LLC, also known as Commonwealth...more
On April 1, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned a $93 million judgment issued against Commonwealth Financial Network (“Commonwealth”) nearly one year ago in a case by the Securities and...more
The court rejects the SEC's per se materiality argument and requires proof of a causal connection between the defendant's allegedly inadequate disclosures and purported unlawful profits....more
The materiality standard in fraud cases may soon shift dramatically if the comments of Supreme Court justices during a recent oral argument are any indication. A rollback of the materiality standard would be the latest in a...more
On January 27, 2025, US Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Hester Peirce gave the keynote address at the Northwestern Securities Regulation Institute in which she offered her personal views on how public...more
SEC Penalizes Director for Misleading D&O Questionnaire Response - The SEC recently brought an enforcement action against a director for causing violations of the proxy rules by failing to disclose a close personal...more
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 18, 2024, dismissed most of the SEC's landmark cyber enforcement litigation against SolarWinds Corp. (SolarWinds or the Company) and the Company's Chief...more
The SEC has been aggressively pursuing cybersecurity investigations and enforcement actions against public companies and foreign private issuers. In these actions, the SEC often alleges one of two theories: 1) that the...more
Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reemphasized just how serious companies must be about maintaining a vigilant cybersecurity posture and procedures to report cyber incidents in a timely manner....more
As discussed in our September 1, 2021 post, the SEC brought its first “shadow insider trading” case against Matthew Panuwat, a company employee who purchased options in a competitor’s shares shortly after learning his...more
Proskauer’s Hedge Fund Trading Guide offers a concise, easy-to-read overview of the trading issues and questions we commonly encounter when advising hedge funds and their managers. It is written not only for lawyers, but also...more
As we do every year, this issue revisits the key cases and other developments from the year gone by. And by most metrics, 2023 was a notable year for the False Claims Act (FCA). We start with the numbers: The Department...more
On November 20, 2023, the Northern District of California denied summary judgment for the defendant in SEC v. Panuwat, an enforcement action being brought under a novel theory of insider trading law that is being referred to...more
In this post, we summarize noteworthy False Claims Act (FCA) decisions so far from 2023. Each of the three circuit court opinions discussed here ruled in favor of the defendants on different aspects of the FCA: the Sixth...more
To help you stay up-to-date on the enforcement trends impacting your compliance strategy, McDermott is pleased to invite you to the 2022 Enforcement Outlook webinar series, which covers key areas of enforcement on the second...more
As previously discussed as a part of our ongoing FCA Fundamentals series, the False Claims Act (FCA) is the federal government’s most important and most effective tool for fighting fraud. While Congress has substantially...more
E. False Claims Act: Materiality - 1. False Claims Amendments Act of 2021 (S.2428) - • The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has approved for the Senate’s full consideration an amendment to the FCA that would...more
A California Court recently allowed the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or “Commission”) to proceed with its first insider trading prosecution based on a theory of “shadow trading.” On January 14, 2022, Judge...more
The year 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the Bradley False Claims Act Year in Review. In that decade, much has remained the same in FCA enforcement. To start with the obvious: It continues to result in billions of dollars...more