In a recent case, a court found the implementation of a document retention policy to amount to the spoliation of evidence and imposed the “nuclear” sanction of declaring the suit unenforceable. In the case of Micron Tech. v. Rambus in the U.S. District Court for Delware, Judge Sue Robinson was addressing the effect of Rambus’ … Read more »
Data Breach at Heartland Payment Systems
Heartland Payment Systems (HPY) disclosed that intruders hacked into the computers it uses to process 100 million payment card transactions per month for 175,000 merchants. The company said it couldn’t estimate how many customer records have been compromised, but said the data compromised include the information on a card’s magnetic strip that could be used … Read more »
Can Facebook Get You Into Legal Trouble?
Kim S. Nash writing for CIO.com: How Text Messaging and Facebook Can Get You in Legal Trouble. The article focusing on the electronic discovery pitfalls of the ever-changing and expanding ways we communicate. One thing is clear, banning access to social networking platforms is not effective. Even if you ban access in the workplace, your … Read more »
Facebook and Airlines
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic both ran into trouble when their employees posted nasty remarks about their customers on Facebook. This raises the question about whether the companies did enough to educate their employees about the proper use of social networking. See: The Economist: Losing Face The Guardian: Virgin Sacks 13 Over Facebook ‘chav’ Remarks … Read more »
Draft SEC Filings Can Be Protected From Discovery
In a January 9, 2009 order, Magistrate Judge Morton Denlow of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that Aon was not required to produce an email seeking comments on draft disclosure language for Aon’s Form 10-K because it was protected by the attorney-client privilege. Magistrate’s Opinion and Order in Roth … Read more »
Risk IQ
Sumner Blount and CA have coined the term Risk IQ to address a company’s risk management environment: Risk IQ – The Key to Effective Risk Management. The idea is deliver comprehensive, timely and accurate information to the decision makers to improve the decision-making process. They break the Risk IQ into two parts: visibility and insight. … Read more »
The Anti-Corruption Principle in the U.S. Constitution
Are integrity or self-governance part of the constitutional framework of the United States? Do we need to give constitutional-like weight to the distortions to our democracy seen in campaign finance, redistricting, term limits and lobbying? Zephyr Teachout published an article in the January 2009 edition of the Cornell Law Review: The Anti-Corruption Principle (pdf). The … Read more »
What Is Insider Trading?
The SEC.gov website has a blurb on Insider Trading. They start off with legal insider trading, when officers, directors and employees buy and sell stock in their own companies. Corporate insiders are required to report their trades. Illegal insider trading “refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or … Read more »
Chakrapani Insider Trading
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ramesh Chakrapani with insider trading. Chakrapani was an employee of the Blackstone Group. The SEC alleges that Chakrapani tipped off a friend about the pending acquisition of the supermarket company Albertson’s Inc. before the public announcement of the deal in January 2006. See coverage of the story: Steve Schwarzman … Read more »
Business Risk Intelligence
These are my notes from the OCEG webinar: Business Risk Intelligence. Carole Stern Switzer, President of OCEG Paul Shultz, Managing Director of Protiviti Dave Anderson, Senior Director of SAP Business Objects Paul frames the problem: Risk is often just an afterthought of strategy, resulting in strategic objectives that may be unrealistic and risk management being … Read more »