Days Seem Numbered for Circuit’s Controversial Insider Trading Decision

December 10, 2020  |  New York Law Journal

Days before Thanksgiving, in a notable about-face, the government agreed that the Supreme Court should vacate a Second Circuit panel’s controversial insider trading decision in United States v. Blaszczak, accepting that Blaszczak’s holding that a government regulatory agency’s confidential information can constitute protectible “property” had been undermined by the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in the George Washington Bridge case. But vacating Blaszczak would also erase the panel’s more controversial holding that the “personal benefit” test for insider trading does not apply to cases brought under the Title 18 fraud statutes, which would have significantly broadened the reach of criminal insider trading laws. In our article, “Days Seem Numbered for Circuit’s Controversial Insider Trading Decision,” we analyze the defendants’ petitions for Supreme Court review in Blazsczak discuss the implications of the government’s change in position. 

Days Seem Numbered for Circuit’s Controversial Insider Trading Decision (pdf | 487.86 KB)