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Reading the headline, I’m sure a few of you rolled your eyes.  Dodd-Frank? Sarbanes-Oxley? Those statutes are seen as dull and tedious.  But a new federal court decision in Connecticut should start to change that, and it has implications for employers nationwide. 

The case is Kramer v. Trans-Lux, which you can download here. It addressed an employer’s motion to dismiss a claim of whistleblower retaliation under the Dodd-Frank Act. Ultimately, the court allowed the employee’s claim to proceed, noting that under the facts alleged, the employee has a viable claim.

What was the case about?  According to the applicable complaint (which the court assumed as true for purposes of deciding the motion), the plaintiff was a Vice-President of Human Resources with responsibility for ensuring that the company’s benefit plans were in compliance with applicable law.  He claimed that he expressed concern about the makeup and number of people on the pension plan committee and that he did not believe the company was adhering to its pension plan. 

He claimed that he contacted the audit committee and, importantly, claimed that he sent a letter to the SEC regarding the company’s failure to submit a 2009 amendment to the board of directors.  He then claimed that he was reprimanded and the subject of an investigation. Shortly thereafter, he was stripped of his responsibilities and later terminated.
Continue Reading A New Whistleblower Retaliation Statute Grows Up: Dodd-Frank is the new Sarbanes-Oxley.

I’ll be the first to admit that the words “Sarbanes-Oxley Act” are likely to induce a big collective yawn from many of you out there.  Even the acronym “SOX” doesn’t liven things up.  (Then there are people, like Doug Cornelius at the Compliance Building blog who eat this stuff up.)

But here’s what you need to know as an employer: Terminated employees can bring a whistleblowing claim under SOX without using the words “fraud” but just by complaining about what they perceive to be as a violation of federal law.  Indeed, the caselaw on these claims is starting to mirror the pattern of retaliation claims — and we all know how notoriously difficult it is to defend against those types of claims.

SOX, not socks.

A relative new case out of the federal court in Connecticut illustrates this issue.  In Barker v. UBS AG (download here), the employer’s motion for summary judgment was denied on a SOX whistleblower claim. 

What does a terminated employee (who, the employer contends, was terminated during a reduction in force) have to show to get her case to trial? Initially, to establish a prima facie case, the plaintiff must demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that: (1) she engaged in protected activity; (2) the employer knew of the protected activity; (3) she suffered an unfavorable personnel action; and (4) circumstances exist to suggest that the protected activity was a contributing factor to the unfavorable action.

If the plaintiff meets her burden, the employer can then avoid liability if it can prove by clear and convincing evidence [a much higher standard of proof] that it would have taken the same personnel action in the absence of the protected activity.

And what is “protected activity”? This is where things differ slightly from retaliation claims. Here, as the court explains it.  the employee must she “had both a subjective belief and an objectively reasonable belief that the conduct [s]he complained of constituted a violation of relevant law” and  the employee’s communications “must definitively and specifically relate to [one] of the listed categories of fraud or securities violations” in SOX.Continue Reading Pull Up Your SOX: The New Whistleblowing Claim Grows Up