Supreme Court to Treat Burwell Infection

December 2017

Shareholder Jason de Bretteville and associate Sheila S. Mojtehedi wrote an article for the Westlaw Journal (Delaware Corporate and Corporate Officers & Directors Liability) discussing the possible impact of Digital Realty Trust v. Somers, a recently argued U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a 9th Circuit decision that extended anti-retaliation protection to corporate insiders who blow the whistle internally but do not notify the government. De Bretteville and Mojtehedi conclude that the Supreme Court is unlikely to agree with the 9th Circuit’s reasoning in Somers that a court can ignore statutory definitions whenever doing so will, in the court’s view, better achieve Congress’ policy objectives and amount to a novel form of jurisprudence that would privilege judicial inferences over the plain text of a statute in a manner that transcends even King v. Burwell. Read the full article below.