Justia Corporate Compliance Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
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Plaintiff filed suit under Sarbanes-Oxley, 18 U.S.C. 1514A(a)(1)(C), and Dodd-Frank, 15 U.S.C. 78u-6(h)(1)(A)(iii), after Oracle terminated his employment in retaliation for reporting that Oracle was falsely projecting sales revenues. The district court granted summary judgment to Oracle. The court joined the Second, Third, and Sixth Circuits and adopted the "reasonable belief" standard in Sylvester v. Parexel Int’l LLC standard, rejecting Platone v. FLYI, Inc.'s "definite and specific" standard, in determining that the employee must simply prove that a reasonable person in the same factual circumstances with the same training and experience would believe that the employer violated securities laws. Under the Sylvester standard, the court concluded that plaintiff's belief that Oracle was defrauding its investors was objectively unreasonable where missed projections by no more than $10 million are minor discrepancies to a company that annually generates billions of dollars. The court also concluded that plaintiff's claim under Dodd-Frank fails because he did not make a disclosure protected under Sarbanes-Oxley. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Beacom v. Oracle America, Inc." on Justia Law