Law Commons^™

Contract Production In M&A Markets, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Matthew Jennejohn, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Contract scholarship has devoted considerable attention to how contract terms are designed to incentivize parties to fulfill their obligations. Less attention has been paid to the production of contracts and the tradeoffs between using boilerplate terms and designing bespoke provisions. In thick markets everyone uses the standard form despite the known drawbacks of boilerplate. But in thinner markets, such as the private deal M&A world, parties trade off costs and benefits of using standard provisions and customizing clauses. This Article reports on a case study of contract production in the M&A markets. We find evidence of an informal information network …

Re-Examining The Line Between Personal And Political Campaign Expenditures: Possible Solutions For A Hazy Statutory Framework, Jeffrey Greenberg

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

On Wednesday, May 16, 2018, the Public Integrity Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office indicted Richard Thomas. Thomas, the mayor of Mount Vernon, New York, faced felony charges of grand larceny and filing false statements resulting from the alleged theft of thousands of dollars from his mayoral campaign committee, Friends of Richard Thomas, for meals, automobile payments, and other personal expenses. While Thomas eventually pled guilty to misdemeanor charges and resigned from office, the prosecutors’ choice to use fraud and theft statutes rather than election law violations as the foundation for their theory of the case calls …

From The Basketball Court To Federal Court: Perils Of The Prosecutorial Approach To Wire Fraud In The Ncaa Basketball Cases, Paul Tuchmann

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Three similar criminal cases involving college basketball are currently progressing through the Southern District of New York. The first to go to trial, United States v. James Gatto, Merl Code, and Christian Dawkins, No. 17 Crim. 686, culminated in a guilty verdict on October 24, 2018, with all three defendants found guilty on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleged that the Gatto defendants participated in a scheme in which the defendants—former Adidas employees Gatto and Code, as well as aspiring sports agent …

Report Of The Task Force For The Promotion Of Public Trust: City Of Atlanta, Leah Ward Sears, Derek Alphran, O.V. Brantley, Linda Disantis, William S. Duffy Jr., Robert M. Franklin Jr., Maryanne Gaunt, Lawton Jordan, Don Penovi, Michael T. Sterling, Joseph Wilkinson Jr., Paul Zucca

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

The Task Force for the Promotion of Public Trust was formed out of a desire by the Mayor and Atlanta City Council to strengthen the City’s ethical environment and analyze the City’s existing resources pertaining to oversight and investigations currently divided among a number of City agencies. The Task Force was also asked to assess the role of the City’s Independent Compliance Office, a new investigative office created by Ordinance earlier this year. The mandate of the Task Force was to juxtapose an analysis of the operational roles of the multiple offices in Atlanta responsible for investigations, ethics, oversight, audit, …

Copyright As Market Prospect, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

For many decades now, copyright jurisprudence and scholarship have looked to the common law of torts – principally trespass and negligence – in order to understand copyright’s structure of entitlement and liability. This focus on property – and harm-based torts – has altogether ignored an area of tort law with significant import for our understanding of copyright law: tortious interference with a prospective economic advantage. This Article develops an understanding of copyright law using tortious interference with a prospect as a homology. Tortious interference with a prospect allows a plaintiff to recover when a defendant’s volitional actions interfere with a …

Profile In Public Integrity: Jacques Duchesneau, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Jacques Duchesneau was appointed Inspector General of Saint-Jérôme, Quebec in March 2017. In this position, he leads the newly created Bureau d'intégrité professionnelle et administrative (BIPA), an agency tasked with identifying and combating cases of public corruption, collusion, and fraud. Before becoming Saint-Jérome’s Inspector General, Duchesneau served as the head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), and as Chief of the Montréal Police Service.

Profile In Public Integrity: David Harper, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

David Harper was appointed as the Inspector General of Albuquerque, New Mexico, this past April. Prior to becoming Inspector General, Harper served for over three decades in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), conducting and overseeing financial investigations resulting in recoveries of over one billion dollars. Most recently, he served as AFOSI’s Chief of Economic Crimes Investigations. In that capacity, he directed staff support to the more than 200 AFOSI field and regional offices and oversaw over 500 financial crime investigations. Harper previously served as Special Agent-in-Charge of the AFOSI regional office in Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a …

What Do Corrupt Firms Have In Common? Red Flags Of Corruption In Organizational Culture, Alison Taylor

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

What kind of an organizational culture do corrupt companies tend to have? To answer this question, I conducted a study based on a review of academic literature as well as in-depth interviews with 23 prominent lawyers, investigators, scholars, and policymakers with firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of dozens of corrupt firms. They highlighted a number of common traits often missed by standard compliance processes that might be “red flags” for organizational corruption. These traits don’t guarantee corruption within an organization, but they do point to the conditions in which it thrives.

The Conviction Of Congressman Chaka Fattah, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Congressman Chaka Fattah has represented Pennsylvania’s 2nd District, which includes parts of Philadelphia, for 20 years.

On June 21, 2016, Congressman Fattah was convicted on all 23 counts of public corruption he faced, including conspiracy to commit racketeering (RICO), bribery, money laundering, and fraud. Fattah’s four co-defendants included his chief of staff as well as a former Philadelphia deputy mayor.

Profile In Public Integrity: Hubert Sparks, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Hubert Sparks was appointed the first inspector general of the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1989 and was also the first inspector general of the Denali Commission. Previously, Sparks served 29 years in oversight roles at Offices of the Inspector General at the Departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security, and Veteran’s Affairs. He is a member of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency and served on the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Sparks holds a B.B.A. in accounting from the City College of New York.

Profile In Public Integrity: Matthew Boxer, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Matthew Boxer currently chairs the Corporate Investigations and Integrity practice group at Lowenstein Sandler, LLP. Previously, Boxer served six years as New Jersey’s first independent State Comptroller. In that role, he was responsible for auditing government finances, examining the efficiency of government programs, investigating misconduct by government officers, scrutinizing the legality of government contracts and recovering improperly expended Medicaid funds. Under Boxer’s leadership, the office uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars in waste and fraud.

Profile In Public Integrity: Jack Blum, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Jack Blum is a Washington lawyer who is an expert on white-collar financial crime and international tax evasion. He spent fourteen years as a staff attorney with the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Blum played a central role in the Lockheed Aircraft bribery investigation of the 1970's – which led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – and in the investigation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Blum has been a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, …

The Conviction Of Former New York State Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Sheldon Silver is the former Democratic Speaker of the New York State Assembly, a post he held from 1994 until January 2015. He represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side from 1976 until November 30, 2015, when he was convicted on four counts of honest-services fraud, two counts of extortion and one count of money laundering.

New Jersey's "Bridgegate" Scandal, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

From September 9-13, 2013, officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey shut down access lanes of the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York City for a "traffic study" that gridlocked the small city of Fort Lee, New Jersey for hours each day. In the following weeks, evidence emerged of political motives behind the bridge closure, spurring federal prosecutors to announce an investigation in January 2014. On May 1, 2015, Paul Fishman, U.S. Attorney of New Jersey, charged that two defendants illegally closed the bridge to punish Fort Lee's mayor for refusing to endorse …

The Fifa Corruption Charges, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is the global governing body for soccer, the world’s most popular sport. A Swiss-based nonprofit, FIFA has long been criticized for a culture of impunity and corruption, most prominently in connection with the World Cup host-country bidding process.

Profile In Public Integrity: Marjorie Landa, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Marjorie Landa is the Deputy Comptroller for Audit at the Office of the New York City Comptroller. Previously, Landa served as Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs to the New York City Department of Investigation. There, she counseled the agency on legal issues including criminal and civil procedure, conflicts of interest, forfeiture and restitution, and the agency’s unique legal authority. Prior to that, Ms. Landa was Deputy Chief in the New York City Office of the Corporation Counsel, Affirmative Litigation Division. In that capacity she served as lead counsel in high-profile cases including fraud, civil RICO, False Claims Act, intergovernmental funding, …

The Sheldon Silver Case, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Sheldon Silver was the Speaker of the New York State Assembly from 1994 until January 28, 2015. He represents Manhattan's Lower East Side as a Democrat, which he has since 1976.

The federal criminal complaint charges that Silver, since 2000 or earlier, "us[ed] the power and influence of his official position to obtain for himself millions of dollars of bribes.” In the complaint, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (who has jurisdiction over Manhattan), outlines $4 million in illicit funds disguised as outside income. Allegedly, Silver took kickbacks from various parties for whom he secured state …

Profile In Public Integrity: Daniel E. Karson, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Daniel E. Karson is Chairman of Kroll, based in the New York office. Dan has more than 40 years’ experience directing investigations of business crimes. His practice areas include major fraud investigations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, litigation support, contests for corporate control, Internet crimes, financial crimes, asset searches, product counterfeiting and due diligence.

Dan launched Kroll’s European operations, opening its London office and serving as its first Managing Director in 1986. Dan also opened Kroll offices in Boston and Philadelphia, and served as Kroll’s General Counsel for eleven years.

Prior to joining Kroll, Dan was General Counsel and Assistant …

Profile In Public Integrity: John Hyland, Jr., Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

John Hyland has been a Senior Legal Advisor with the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (AFMLS) of the U.S. Department of Justice since 1992. His duties include reviewing money laundering prosecution memoranda and indictments, consulting with attorneys and special agents about asset forfeiture and money laundering cases investigations and indictments, representing the Criminal Division at agency undercover case reviews, helping analyze evidence of financial crimes, and lecturing on asset forfeiture and money laundering topics. Previously, Mr. Hyland worked in private practice in the Washington area for 12 years. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District …

Profile In Public Integrity: Joseph Ferguson, Center For The Advancement Of Public Integrity

Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity (Inactive)

Joseph Ferguson is in his second term as Chicago’s Inspector General. Ferguson came to the Inspector General’s Office following 15 years with the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Northern District of Illinois. From 1994 through 1999 he represented the United States in cases before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals involving employment discrimination (Title VII), civil rights, environmental law, and government program fraud. From 2000 to 2009, Ferguson worked in the Criminal Division of the USAO, prosecuting public corruption, mail/wire fraud, tax, healthcare and government program frauds, …

After Dura: Causation In Fraud-On-The-Market Actions, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

On April 19, 2005, the Supreme Court announced its unanimous opinion in Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, concerning what a plaintiff must show to establish causation in a Rule lob-5 fraud-on-the-market suit for damages. The opinion had been awaited with considerable anticipation, being described at the time of oral argument in the Financial Times, for example, as the "most important securities case in a decade." After the opinion was handed down, a representative of the plaintiffs' bar lauded it as a "unanimous ruling protecting investors' ability to sue." A representative of the defendants' bar equally enthusiastically hailed it as "a …

Thinking To Be Paid Versus Being Paid To Think, Merritt B. Fox

Faculty Scholarship

In the first chapter of The Economic Structure of Corporate Law, Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel make an arresting statement:

... [P]eople who are backing their beliefs with cash are correct; they have every reason to avoid mistakes, while critics (be they academics or regulators) are rewarded for novel rather than accurate beliefs. Market professionals who estimate these things wrongly suffer directly; academics and regulators who estimate wrongly do not pay a similar penalty. Persons who wager with their own money may be wrong, but they are less likely to be wrong than are academics and regulators, who are wagering …

How Useful Is Civil Rico In The Enforcement Of Criminal Law?, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

The title of this paper asks what appears to be a simple and important question: Just how much does the availability of extensive private civil remedies for violation of the RICO statute add to the effort to ensure compliance with the norms of criminal law? These remarks address only civil RICO actions by private plaintiffs. The once-rare, but increasingly frequent, civil RICO actions brought by the United States present very different issues. This question is, of course, only a part of any assessment of the value of civil RICO. One may conclude that civil RICO is of little or no …

Accountable Accountants: Is Third-Party Liability Necessary?, Victor P. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Should accountants be liable to third parties if they conduct an audit in negligent manner? A half century ago, in Ultramares Corporation v. Touche, Niven & Co., Cardozo argued that they should not, unless their performance could be characterized as fraud. In recent years, courts in a minority of jurisdictions have concluded that Cardozo's argument is no longer compelling and they have found that "foreseeable" third parties could bring a tort action for ordinary negligence against the accountants. In addition to being subject to tort actions, accountants may also be liable under federal and state securities laws.

Suits against …