A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s board to tour the Butte County community where the company’s equipment is suspected of starting a historically devastating California wildfire last year.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “U.S. District Judge William Alsup made the decision at a sentencing hearing he held for the utility regarding a violation of its probation arising from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. Alsup previously found the utility did not properly report a settlement it reached over a small 2017 fire.”

Alsup said he wanted the energy company executives to “see the gravity of what happened up there” and indicated he likely will join the tour.

Read the SF Chronicle article.

Hanzo will present a webinar on how to structure a robust investigation protocol to help compliance teams conduct investigations on a regular basis.

The webinar, “Compliance Investigations: Best Practices and Effectiveness Essentials,” will be May 17, 2019, at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Tom Fox, the Compliance Evangelist and the author of The Compliance Handbook, and Michael Volkov, CEO of the Volkov Law Group, will be presenters.

The webinar will cover:

1) Why the intake of a hotline report is a critical start of your investigation protocol.

2) How to effectively set up a triage program for all internal and external reporting.

3) The different levels of investigations you should set up.

4) What type of report you should issue.

5) How and why you should protect the privilege.

Register for the webinar.

Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission have come to a settlement agreement over the Tesla CEO’s errant behavior on social media: All of Musk’s communication via social media, the company’s website, press releases, and investor calls must be preapproved by an “experienced securities lawyer.”

Musk got into trouble with the SEC earlier this year when he tweeted a projection about Tesla vehicle production that the agency considered to be misleading.

Business Insider reports that Musk must “implement mandatory procedures and controls” providing oversight of all of his communications regarding the company “made in any format.”

Read the Business Insider article.

Hertz Global Holdings has filed a lawsuit against its former general counsel and some other former managers after they refused to pay back at least $70 million in incentive compensation for their roles in an accounting scandal five years ago, reports The Global Legal Post.

The company accused the former executives of pressuring employees to use fraudulent accounting techniques to inflate income and earnings, according to a March 25 lawsuit.

Former general counsel Jeffrey Zimmerman has refused to return incentive compensation tied to the erroneous accounting results.

Read the Global Legal Post article.

Berkeley Law professor Amelia Miazad will analyze how the #MeToo movement has impacted foundational aspects of corporate governance when Berkeley Boosts presents a free webinar on April 23, 2019, at 10 a.m. Pacific time. MCLE credit will be available.

Those aspects to be discussed include board composition, how the board oversees risk, CEO selection and compensation, and M&A deals.

Berkeley Boosts is a monthly series of free webinars (with MCLE credit) and articles for legal practitioners and organizational leaders. Berkeley Boosts content is curated by the Berkeley Center for Law and Business and Berkeley Law Executive Education.

Register for the webinar.

Past Berkeley Boosts webinars have covered a range of topics, including:

The Wild World of Class Actions
March 20, 2019
Presenters: David Singh, Partner and Hannah Jones, Associate at Weil

The Rise of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
February 26, 2019
Presenter: Mario Mancuso, Kirkland & Ellis (formerly Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security)

Blockchain Explained
January 22, 2019
Presenters: Ian Lee, IDEO CoLab, and Nancy Wojtas, Cooley LLP

To access recordings of these presentations, as well as receive notice of upcoming webinars, sign up for the mailing list.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore is being sued by a former public shareholder of a grocery chain in a class action that alleges the firm breached its fiduciary duty by providing tainted advice that directed the grocer toward a buyer, private equity group Apollo Global Management, reports Bloomberg Law.

In the complaint, the former shareholder claims Cravath crafted a “false and misleading” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing relating to the 2016 $1.36 billion leveraged buyout of The Fresh Market by Apollo.

The complaint alleges Cravath drafted the SEC filing “to procure stockholder approval and cover up prior wrongdoing,” and in doing so, pocketed $5.5 million in fees in what amounted to “a sham sale process.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

A federal appeals court upheld about $8 million in damages Tuesday to the former general counsel of a Bay Area laboratory who was fired after telling company officials about possible bribery and records falsification by the lab’s employees in China, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bio-Rad Laboratories fired general counsel Sanford Wadler in 2013, claiming poor performance. The company also claimed it found no evidence of wrongdoing by its employees.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday found evidence to support the 2017 verdict by a federal court jury in San Francisco that Wadler had acted as a whistle-blower and was dismissed in retaliation for reporting conduct that he “reasonably believed” to be illegal, according to the Chronicle‘s Bob Egelko.

Read the SF Chronicle article.

A federal judge has ordered Tesla chief Elon Musk to explain by March 11 why he should not be held in contempt for what the Securities and Exchange Commission described as a violation of a settlement deal last year, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Musk tweeted Feb. 19 that Tesla would make around 500,000 cars in 2019,” writes the Chronicle‘s Melia Russell. “Later that day, he sent a follow-up tweet saying that number represented Tesla’s ‘annualized production rate at end of 2019’ and it would only roll about 400,000 cars off the manufacturing line this year.”

Bloomberg explains that Tesla’s internal system to have an in-house lawyer vet Musk’s tweets didn’t work in this case because his “social-media minder didn’t bless” the Feb. 19 post:

The sitter — whose official title at Tesla is alternately Disclosure Counsel or Designated Securities Counsel — did step in after seeing the offending tweet and arranged to meet Musk to draft a clarifying post.

Read the SF Chronicle article.

Hanzo will present a webinar on the dynamic relationship between compliance and marketing on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019, at 2 p.m. EST.

In today’s increasingly digital, collaborative, interactive, and social media-driven business landscape, the role of marketing and the campaigns, content, and messaging these professionals create can produce significant, unintended financial and reputational risks, the company said in a release. That risk is magnified when compliance is siloed from key functions, decisions, and business processes.

While it’s true that marketers can create problems and regulatory headaches for compliance professionals, it’s also true that compliance professionals can learn how to become more effective from their marketing peers, the release continues.

Tom Fox and Louis Sapirman will present the live, one-hour webinar .

All registrants will receive a recording of the webinar and copy of our presentation, and this webinar is currently pending approval by the SCCE for 1.2 live and non-live CCB CEUs.

In this webinar, experts discuss:

• Common risks and compliance violations that can stem from digital marketing activity.
• How compliance teams can become more effective through marketing best practices.
• The benefits and risks of social media for compliance teams.
• How compliance and marketing teams can form more transparent, collaborative relationships so both can succeed and do their best work.

Register for the webinar.

Barbara Underwood was an apolitical force in New York, quietly serving as solicitor general before getting an unexpected promotion to become the state’s first female attorney general, writes the Associated Press.

In her eight months in the AG’s role, she sued to put President Donald Trump’s charitable foundation out of business, accusing him of running it as a wing of his private businesses and political campaign. She also used the courts to challenge his administration on a multitude of policy fronts, including opposing its push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Underwood was appointed attorney general by the state legislature in May after the surprise resignation of Eric Schneiderman, explains AP’s Michael R. Sisak.

Now she’s going back to the solicitor general’s office, but Trump still faces challenges from New York, from the new AG, Letitia James.

Read the AP article.

Hanzo, a developer of dynamic web archiving technology for compliance and e-discovery professionals, announced a lineup of industry experts presenting in the webinar “How to Win Using Native Format to Capture Social Media Data,” on Dec. 19, 2018.

The event will include a discussion about the importance of social media to business communications and the ensuing challenges it presents for e-discovery and compliance in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The webinar also will share strategic insights and best practices for defensible social media collection and real-world stories from the field.

In a release, the company said social media is a valuable way to communicate with customers, but many heavily regulated financial firms shy away from its use, fearing that regulatory compliance will be too difficult. Organizations can also find social media to be critical in e-discovery because it offers a rare window into people’s daily thoughts and activities, even after those people have become embroiled in litigation.

Recent data privacy and security discussions have impacted the use of APIs for social media collections. In this webinar industry experts from legal to corporate will share their experiences with how organizations use and deal with social media in the course of their business. They’ll discuss the risk and challenges surrounding compliance and eDiscovery collections, and explore what is driving organizations toward superior native-format collections.

Speakers will be:

• Mark A. Smolik, General Counsel Chief Compliance Officer, DHL Supply Chain Americas
• Michael Quartararo, Managing Director, eDPM Advisory Services
• Steve Tanner, Social Media & Online Communities Lead, Relativity
• Evan Gumz, Senior Account Executive, EDiscovery, Hanzo

REGISTER
How to Win Using Native Format to Capture Social Media Data
https://www.hanzo.co/native-format-capture-social-media-webinar
Date: Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Time: 1:30 pm ET
Cost: Free

Register for the webinar.

The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday formally demanded financial records from U.S. President Donald Trump’s businesses as part of their lawsuit alleging his dealings with foreign governments violate anti-corruption clauses of the U.S. Constitution, reports Reuters.

The Trump Organization Inc., the president’s privately owned real estate company, and related corporate entities received the subpoenas, according to Reuters reporter Jan Wolfe.

The report quotes George Brown, a professor at Boston College Law School:

The development “brings us closer to judicially enforced discovery about the Trump empire,” said Brown. “It will probably tell us a lot we don’t know because nobody is going to hide that stuff in the face of a subpoena.”

Read the Reuters article.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether it should place limits on class-action settlements in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers receive millions and their clients get nothing, reports The New York Times.

“The case arose from an $8.5 million settlement between Google and class-action lawyers who said the company had violated its users’ privacy rights,” writes Times reporter Adam Liptak. “Under the settlement, the lawyers were paid more than $2 million, but members of the class received no money.”

As a part of the settlement, Google agreed to contribute to institutions concerned with privacy on the internet, including centers at Harvard, Stanford and Chicago-Kent College of Law, and AARP.

“How can you say that it makes any sense?” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked a lawyer for the members of the class.

Read the NY Times article.

The Justice Department’s Criminal Division has announced updated policies and procedures related to the selection of corporate monitors in federal criminal cases, according to an advisory written by Paul N. Monnin, a partner in Alston &. Bird.

He writes:

The memorandum makes clear that “the Criminal Division should favor the imposition of a monitor only where there is a demonstrated need for, and clear benefit to be derived from, a monitorship relative to the costs and burdens.” In short, a monitor is now disfavored “[w]here a corporation’s compliance program and controls are demonstrated to be effective and appropriately resourced at the time of resolution.”

The article also includes a link to a PDF of the DOJ advisory.

Read the article.

Image by Steve Jurvetson

Of the all fixes the SEC wants Tesla Inc. to make in the wake of Elon Musk’s now-infamous tweet, one stands out for its novelty: “An experienced securities lawyer” to review all social media communications by the company’s senior officers, reports Bloomberg Law.

“In resolving its fraud claims against Tesla and Musk, the Securities and Exchange Commission specified in the fine print of its settlement proposal that the lawyer hired or designated to vet tweets must have qualifications that’“are not unacceptable to the staff,’” writes reporter Peter Blumberg.

The head of the legal department now is a lawyer who represented Musk through two divorces, Todd Maron.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Image by Steve Jurvetson

CNBC reports that some securities lawyers said they were shocked by a tweet from Elon Musk that said Musk was mulling a take-private transaction for Tesla, his electric car company. The tweet even named a target price, $420 a share, and said financing was lined up.

Reporter Liz Moyer quotes Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, who told her, “I do not believe this is the appropriate way to suggest going private.”

If the content of the tweet wasn’t true, lawyers said, it could set up Musk and the company for regulatory action and private lawsuits.

Read the CNBC article.

Uber Technologies Inc. named Scott Schools, a former top attorney at the U.S. Justice Department, as chief compliance officer, reports Bloomberg.

“The newly created role is designed to help Uber avoid the kinds of scandals and legal scrutiny that enveloped the business last year,” according to reporter Eric Newcomer. The ride-hailing company has faced at least five U.S. criminal inquiries, people familiar with the probes have said.

At the Justice Department, Schools was a top adviser to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Compliance Week will present a webcast titled “Compliance and Contract Management –The Right People, Process & Technology” to highlight effective strategies and considerations to maintain compliance with contractual agreements in the U.S. and abroad.

The event will be Wednesday, June 27, at 2 p.m. EDT.

“While relying on both outside counsel and third-party legal services providers to meet standards and governing party obligations, competitive organizations enlist effective digital strategies where appropriate and seek to automate as many tasks as possible,” Compliance Week says on its website. “As we explore the people, processes and technology that aid compliance and contract management, we’ll discuss e-Communications monitoring, digital learning services, open source software and trending technology such as block chain contracts, and other tools.”

Register for the webcast.

The Washington Post reports that Facebook’s disclosure that its search tools were used to collect data on most of its 2.2 billion users could potentially trigger record fines and create new legal vulnerability for not having prevented risks to user data, three former federal officials said.

“The three former officials, all of whom were at the Federal Trade Commission during the privacy investigation that led to a 2011 consent decree with Facebook, said the company’s latest mishap may violate the decree’s provisions requiring the implementation of a privacy program,” according to reporters Craig Timberg and Tony Romm.

They quote David Vladeck, who was head of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection when the decree was drafted and signed by Facebook, as saying that Facebook could face fines of $1 billion or more for this and the mishap in which Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to information on as many as 87 million Facebook users.

Read the Post report.

Facebook Inc. finds itself in the eye of a rapidly building legal storm over the disclosure of user data to political research firm Cambridge Analytica as lawsuits stack up from users and investors, and regulatory agencies pile on, Bloomberg Technology reports.

Reporter Christie Smythe quotes Marc Melzer, a New York-based attorney: “Facebook’s having to fight on multiple fronts, with potentially conflicting strategies and obligations, is what will make this ‘litigation swarm’ problematic.” The company will likely “want to move slowly and withhold as much as they can without antagonizing regulators or the courts that are presiding over the suits.”

“Damages could be substantial for shareholders, with one group of investors estimating that at least $50 billion in the company’s market capitalization has been wiped out as a result of the disclosure, which affected 50 million users,” Smythe reports.

Read the Bloomberg Technology article.