An article in the Daily Journal titled “Playboy’s professional negligence suit faces tough hurdles, lawyers say” quotes leading whistleblower lawyer Jason Zuckerman about a malpractice lawsuit stemming from a six million dollar jury verdict in a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case.
Zuckerman notes that it was ill-advised for defense counsel to predict that it had a 75 percent chance of winning at trial when it took the jury less than two hours to award $6M to a whistleblower under the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The article also quotes Zuckerman pointing out that it is harder to defeat SOX whistleblower claims in the wake of recent federal court and DOL decisions broadly construing the scope of protected whistleblowing. Those decisions have eliminated loopholes that employers have relief upon to defeat SOX claims.
