MVA Litigation

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that it expects to pay the largest whistleblower reward pursuant to Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) that the agency has paid to date – “more than $30 million” to a foreign whistleblower.  The SEC’s announcement of this record award came shortly after Attorney General Holder reportedly urged Congress to increase the $1.6 million limit on whistleblower awards for information related to financial crimes provided for under the ...

In a recent post, we discussed the D.C. Circuit’s consideration of the District Court’s decision in U.S. ex.rel Barko v. Halliburton Co. et al., Case No. 05-01276 (D.D.C. 2014), which provided an alarming perspective on the applicability of the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine to internal investigations conducted pursuant to government regulatory compliance requirements.  The District Court had ruled that the privilege and work product doctrine did not apply to communications generated during the course of an internal investigation, because the ...

The internal investigation is a critical tool for companies operating in the current environment of stringent regulatory oversight and government scrutiny. The attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine are sacred cornerstones upon which companies rely when engaging counsel to investigate whether wrongdoing has occurred and to devise the best strategies for addressing the outcome of any such investigation. Recent orders by the federal District Court for the District of Columbia in U.S. ex.rel Barko v. Halliburton Co. et al., Case No. 05-01276 (D.D.C. 2014)