A federal court permanently sealed its final order rejecting an investor’s claim that he deserved part of a $14 million SEC whistleblower award to activist investor Carson Block, in a move legal experts called rare and confounding.
The March 23 decision in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia forever hides the court’s legal reasoning from public view.
The ruling is the latest twist stemming from a March 11, 2022 award to Block over his 2011 whistleblower claim. The Securities and Exchange Commission ignored its own staff recommendation that Block didn’t deserve the money. The claim sparked a series of lawsuits involving Block, the SEC and short-seller Kevin Barnes, who worked with Block on the original whistleblower report.
Sean Marotta, an appellate lawyer at Hogan Lovells, said it was extremely unusual for a court to seal a decision permanently. “I’m not saying it hasn’t been done before, but I can’t recall it,” said Marotta, who previously clerked at the New Jersey Superior Court.
Barnes contends that he and Block jointly authored a 2011 report outlining deep fraud and mismanagement at Focus Media, a Chinese advertising and marketing services company that later paid a $55.6 million fine to the SEC, and that the men jointly submitted a whistleblower claim. Block said in court filings he alone was responsible for the report’s content and solely...
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