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This Baker Donelson memo discusses Wadler v. Bio-Rad Laboratories – a recent whistleblower retaliation case in which a jury awarded a former general counsel $8 million. This case is particularly interesting because the plaintiff was permitted to use attorney-client privileged information in support of his claims:

In a seminal trial court decision, the federal court in the Northern District of California ruled in a whistleblower retaliation case that a fired general counsel of Bio-Rad Laboratories could use as evidence otherwise privileged materials. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s protection of whistleblowers preempted the attorney-client privilege and provided key evidence leading to an $8 million jury verdict in plaintiff’s favor.

The former general counsel raised concerns about suspected illegal payments in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that led to his termination. After he unsuccessfully reported to management, he went to the audit committee, whose internal investigation concluded no violation had happened.

General counsel-turned-whistleblowers previously have not been allowed to use attorney-client protected materials, and this case may signal a new approach. We’re posting memos about this case in our “Whistleblowers” Practice Area. And tune into our upcoming webcast: “Whistleblowers: What Companies Should Be Doing Now.”

IPOs: First Publicly Traded Benefit Corp Hits the Market

Rick Alexander at B Lab blogs that Laureate Education has just become first publicly traded “benefit corporation” – and he isn’t a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing his views on the importance of this milestone:

The most important event to take place in the financial world in 2017 has already happened. It was a simple stock offering. But one facet of that otherwise unremarkable transaction signals that the capital markets are open to a change that might just save the planet.

On January 31, Laureate Education completed an initial public offering, raising $490,000,000. Laureate was the first company to go public as a “benefit corporation,” a corporate form that did not even exist ten years ago. While 4,500 benefit corporations have now been created, each of them was privately held until last week’s IPO.

We’ve previously blogged about benefit corporations – which are organized under separate corporate statutes designed to permit boards to consider additional stakeholders alongside shareholders, & give the board discretion to determine the relative weight to place on shareholders’ and other stakeholders’ interests.  The “B Corp” concept has gotten a lot of traction in recent years – 30 states now have benefit corporation statutes – and it will be interesting to see how the concept fares among public investors.

There’s one point in Rick’s blog that I want to correct – although Laureate is the first benefit corporation to go public in the US, it isn’t the first publicly traded benefit corporation.  As Broc noted several years ago, that honor goes to Natura, which is Latin America’s largest cosmetics company & is publicly traded in Brazil.

Update: Cydney Posner points out that Laureate’s IPO took quite some time to cross the finish line – she first blogged about it in 2015!

Our “Q&A Forum”: The Big 9000!

In our “Q&A Forum,” we have blown by query #9000 (although the “real” number is much higher since many of the queries have others piggy-backed on them). I know this is patting ourselves on the back, but it’s over 15 years of sharing expert knowledge and is quite a resource. Combined with the Q&A Forums on our other sites, there have been well over 28,000 questions answered.

You are reminded that we welcome your own input into any query you see. And remember there is no need to identify yourself if you are inclined to remain anonymous when you post a reply (or a question). And of course, remember the disclaimer that you need to conduct your own analysis & that any answers don’t contain legal advice.

– John Jenkins