National Law Journal Quotes The Employment Law Group® Law Firm About Whistleblower Provisions in Financial Services Reform Legislation

The Employment Law Group® law firm is quoted in the lead story in The National Law Journal titled “Financial Reform Includes New Whistleblower Program.”  The article reports on the whistleblower protection provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which we blogged about here.  The article states in part:

However, employment and whistleblower lawyers say the SEC program and other whistleblower protections in the financial reform bill are critical.

“What we saw from the Madoff Ponzi schemes is that the SEC was often asleep at the wheel and had a propensity to ignore information provided by whistleblowers who often did so at substantial risk to their job security and to their careers,” said Jason Zuckerman, principal in Washington, D.C.’s The Employment Law Group. “This new monetary reward program should encourage employees to blow the whistle and put more pressure on the SEC to conduct real investigations that would lead to appropriate accountability.”

Zuckerman said the bill also closes loopholes in the anti-retaliation provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the False Claims Act. Some administrative law judges and courts, he explained, had interpreted those provisions to apply only to the parent entity and not to its subsidiaries. “That was a huge loophole that has been closed,” he said.

The legislation also gives whistleblowers a private cause of action for damages stemming from retaliation.

For more information about The Employment Law Group® law firm’s Whistleblower Retaliation Practice, click here.

Tagged: False Claims Act (FCA), P.C., Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), The Employment Law Group, P.C., Whistleblower Laws (Federal)