July 2011 Archives

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proxy access rule on Friday, marking the first judicial casualty of the Dodd-Frank Act.

At issue was whether a company must pay to distribute proxy statements about shareholder-nominated candidates for the company’s board of directors. Traditionally, a company selected its own board members and sent ballots with information about the nominees to the shareholders in proxy statements; shareholders who wished to make their own nominations were responsible for disseminating their own proxy statements.

The Fisheries Service does not have blanket discretion in determining how to carry out its federally-mandated duties. That's the word out of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in Oceana v. Locke.

The case involved a Fisheries Act amendment requiring the Fisheries Service to establish a "standardized reporting methodology" to assess the amount and type of bycatch, (fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use), in an effort to reduce bycatch in each of the Service's eight regions.