In a scathing opinion, Southern District of New York Judge Ronnie Abrams recently blasted the SEC’s standard demand that defendants settling with the Commission agree never to deny the allegations against them. Judge Abrams’ decision in SEC v. Moraes reluctantly approved a consent decree containing the usual “no admit, no deny” provision in light of the Second Circuit’s recent decision upholding such provisions in SEC v. Romeril, in which Judge Abrams’ father (the famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams) represented the defendant in his unsuccessful petition for certiorari. But Judge Abram expressed concern that the SEC’s insistence on such provisions violates the “unconstitutional conditions doctrine” and the First Amendment.
Southern District of New York
Stumbling Through Securities Law Challenges for COVID-19 Vaccine Developers
By Mee (Rina) Kim on
As the world waits to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, publicly traded pharmaceutical companies waging in that fight are facing the multifaceted challenge of developing COVID-19 responses, informing the public of their progress, and managing legal challenges related to their efforts. Enter AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca partnered with Oxford University to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in April 2020, which it later called “AZD1222.” On May 21, 2020, the company announced that the United States government was providing more than $1 billion for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine. Over the course of the next six months, the company continued to make public announcements on further financial support agreements and interim development results on its vaccine progress.
S.D.N.Y Dismisses Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Action
By Steven J. Pearlman on
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Second Circuit Denies DOJ’s Request for En Banc Review of Newman; Leaves Landmark Insider Trading Decision in Place
By Jonathan Richman & Sigal Mandelker on
The Second Circuit today denied the request by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York for panel or en banc rehearing of the landmark U.S. v. Newman decision, which overturned insider-trading convictions of two remote tippees by (i) holding that a tippee must know…
How Seriously Do Foreign Governments Treat Their Own Secrecy and Blocking Statutes?
By Jonathan Richman on
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an interesting comity decision on whether U.S. courts should defer to foreign countries’ secrecy and blocking statutes when considering motions for discovery of documents located abroad. The court’s analysis turned on how seriously the foreign governments take their own statutes, including whether the governments actually prosecute violations. Based on that analysis, the court deferred to Switzerland’s bank-secrecy regime, but not to France’s “blocking statute” or to statutes in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (the “UAE”). Motorola Credit Corp. v. Uzan, ___ F.R.D. ___, 2014 WL 7269724 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 22, 2014).
This episode of the Motorola saga followed a decision about which we had previously blogged. That blog post had discussed the New York Court of Appeals decision upholding the “separate entity” rule, under which a restraining order served on the New York branch of a multinational bank cannot freeze or attach assets held at a separate foreign branch of the bank. The new decision, in contrast, more narrowly addresses whether a U.S. judgment creditor can subpoena a New York bank to obtain discovery about the judgment debtor’s assets in the bank’s foreign branch.