Next term, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the evidentiary burden of corporate whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as the justices on Monday agreed to hear the appeal of a former UBS employee's whistleblower lawsuit against the investment bank.
The case granted review, Murray v. UBS Securities LLC., deals with a purported split among the federal circuit courts over who has the burden of proof in a whistleblower lawsuit brought under the 2002 act: the employee or the employer? More specifically: Must corporate whistleblowers show at trial that their punishment resulted from their employers' "retaliatory intent"? Or, in order to mount a successful affirmative defense against a whistleblower lawsuit, must employers show that they did not have such intent?
The petitioner in the case, Trevor Murray, claims he was fired as a research strategist from UBS after asserting his independence from the investment bank's trading desk. Murray says he was frequently pressured by a senior UBS trader to color his reports about the bank's investments in commercial mortgage-backed securities to make them more palatable to investors.
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