The Hedge Fund Law Report has published an article by Friedman Kaplan litigation partners Anne Beaumont and Lance Gotko discussing the Obama Administration's call to action for state legislators to significantly curtail employers' ability to use and enforce non-compete provisions. The measure follows efforts already made by some states to attempt to restrain non-competes. More

The Hedge Fund Law Report has published an article by Friedman Kaplan litigation partners Anne Beaumont and Lance Gotko discussing the recent SEC settlement with BlueLinx Holdings Inc. relating to provisions the company had included in severance agreements. Those provisions restricted former employees’ abilities to disclose the company’s confidential information and to receive rewards as SEC whistleblowers. The settlement builds upon the principles articulated in the SEC's April 2015 settlement with KBR, Inc. The BlueLinx and KBR consent orders together underscore the SEC’s view that any provisions that might stifle an employee’s communications with the SEC – either explicitly (as in KBR) or implicitly (as in BlueLinx) – are prohibited, regardless of the employer’s intent, its efforts (or lack thereof) to enforce them or their actual chilling effect. These developments have implications not just for the hedge fund industry: they potentially affect any firm that is subject to SEC oversight. More

In the four decades since the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) was enacted, the private right of action it created has been more regularly used as a type of federal common law fraud claim than as originally intended – a tool to provide relief to legitimate businesses whose industries had been infiltrated by organized crime. In recent years, this trend has continued into the world of health care as more and more plaintiffs are using civil RICO to pursue racketeering allegations with varying degrees of success. More

On Wednesday, May 11, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). The DTSA is a significant piece of legislation that creates a federal cause of action for misappropriation of trade secrets and provides for enhanced damages for trade secret violations.

But despite its name, the Act also provides immunity for whistleblowers who disclose a company’s trade secrets under certain conditions. We believe that all employers should be aware of this aspect of the DTSA, which we briefly summarize here. More

The Hedge Fund Law Report has published an article by Friedman Kaplan litigation partner Anne Beaumont and litigation associate Nora Bojar discussing the recent ruling in Chanin v. Machcinski.  More

Friedman Kaplan partner Ricardo Solano, Jr. has published an article in Pharmaceutical Compliance Monitor addressing the implications and requirements for success that corporate health care providers should expect should they enter into corporate integrity agreements. More

Earlier this month, a group of professors from Columbia and Harvard Law Schools published a seemingly innocuous scholarly paper titled “The 8-K Trading Gap,” which comes to a startling conclusion: data show that insiders of corporate issuers appear routinely to have access to supranormal profits by purchasing the issuers’ securities during the period between the occurrence of an event reportable on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K and the filing of the 8-K. More