| Tags |
Sarbanes Oxley
|
| Year | 2007 |
| Publisher | The Labor Lawyer |
| Volume | 23 |
| Page Range | 191 - 221 |
| Description | Following Enron’s collapse and similar corporate sandals, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) with great fanfare. SOX has, among other things, imposed new disclosure requirements and increased executive responsibility to discourage fraud or other deceptive accounting practices by publicly traded companies. SOX also made it unlawful for an employer to retaliate against an employee for “blowing the whistle on certain types of financial misconduct. To date, federal courts have had limited opportunity to construe many crucial and aguably ambiguous aspects of SOX, particularly section 806, the whistleblower provision. This is due, in part, to the fact that section 806 requires claimants to first file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and federal courts may assume jurisdiction over a section 806 claim only if (1) DOL “has not issued a final decision within 180 days of filing of the complaint and there is no showing that such delay is due to the bad faith of the claimant or (2) an appeal is taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals from a final DOL opinion. SOX also remains relatively new and many cases have settled before judicial resolution. (Description from Source) |