Photo of Pinchos Goldberg

Pinny Goldberg is a senior counsel in the Labor & Employment Law Department. Pinny represents employers in a broad array of matters before federal and state courts, FINRA and other arbitration panels, and administrative agencies, including the EEOC and its state equivalents, and in pre-litigation negotiations. Matters he works on include discrimination and harassment, wage and hour, wrongful discharge, whistleblowing and retaliation, covenants not to compete, breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, and tort and contract claims.

In addition to handling litigation and dispute resolution, Pinny regularly advises clients on a wide variety of employment issues, including drafting, reviewing and revising handbooks and workplace policies. He also addresses questions and concerns related to hiring, wage and hour issues, employee leave, performance problems, terminations of employment, and separation agreements and releases.

The SEC recently announced the settlement of multiple enforcement actions for violations of its whistleblower protection rule, which prohibits “any action to impede an individual from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities law violation.”  SEC Rule 21F-17(a).  These settlements resulted in the targeted companies paying fines

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) recently released its statutorily mandated 2023 Annual Report detailing the status of its whistleblower program for the fiscal year ending on September 20, 2023.

The CFTC’s whistleblower program pays awards to eligible whistleblowers who voluntarily provide original information about violations of the Commodity Exchange

On September 28, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California issued two separate orders in a long-running SOX whistleblower lawsuit.  Following a jury trial, the court upheld the jury’s $1.5 million damages award and awarded the plaintiff $2.4 million in attorneys’ fees.  Erhart v. BofI

On September 25, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board’s rejection of an employee’s Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) retaliation claim, holding the employee did not engage in protected activity because he failed to establish that he had an objective, reasonable

On September 19, 2023, the CFTC announced whistleblower awards totaling over $15 million to two whistleblowers who provided the CFTC with information that assisted the agency in bringing separate successful enforcement actions. 

One of the awards was awarded to a whistleblower who assisted with interpreting key evidence and identifying productive

A recent California district court addressed the question of whether, for insurance coverage purposes, a SOX whistleblower claim is a “securities claim,” and answered that question in the affirmative.   Skye Bioscience v. PartnerRe Ireland Insurance DAC, No. 23-cv-01218.

Section 1514A of SOX provides a cause of action for employees