Whistleblower lawyer Jason Zuckerman co-authored the 2015 Annual Update on the Whistleblower Provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which is published by the American Bar Association Section of Labor and Employment Law Committee on Federal Labor Standards Legislation. Zuckerman has been a contributing author of this annual update on Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower protections for eleven years. The editors of the 2015 update are David Marshall of Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP and Harry W. Wellford, Jr. of Littler Mendelson, P.C. The other co-authors are Connie Bertram of Proskauer Rose, LLP, Cori K. Garland of Littler Mendelson, P.C., Jay P. Lechner of Jackson Lewis, LLP, and Daniel P. Westman of Morrison & Foerster, LLP.
The update discusses recent developments under Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including the trend toward more expansive protections. For example, in March 2014, the Supreme Court held in Lawson v. FMR that SOX 806 protects employees of private contractors of publicly-traded companies, resolving a longstanding circuit split in favor of broad coverage. And in Nielsen v. AECOM Tech. Corp., the Second Circuit held that an employee must only have a “reasonable belief” that a violation occurred, even if that belief is not clearly conveyed to her employer. And 2014 also saw two of the largest jury verdicts in the history of SOX.
