Previously published in Business Law Today
In 2011, courts addressed a variety of securities law claims
arising from the newly enacted Dodd-Frank Act. Signed into law in
July 2010, passage of the Dodd-Frank Act was spurred in part by the
Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme in addition to other smaller-scale
fraudulent schemes. It contains whistleblower provisions meant to
both encourage reporting and expand protection from retaliation for
informants. Dodd-Frank also expanded the Securities and Exchange
Commission's (SEC) ability to bring aiding and abetting claims
by allowing them to be brought under the Securities Act of 1933 and
the Investment Company Act of 1940 in addition to the two other
statutes under which they could already be brought. Many 2011 cases
focused on the interpretation and the applicability of the
whistleblower provisions (which included a fresh look at
Sarbanes-Oxley's whistleblower provisions), but one court also
considered the act's retroactivity in
