A federal appeals court has granted Bloomberg Industry Group’s motion to unseal its opinion in an SEC whistleblower dispute involving activist investor Carson Block and one of his former researchers.
Friday’s order from the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reverses the court’s highly unusual decision to place its March 23 opinion “under permanent seal.” The court denied an attempt by Kevin Barnes, filing under the alias Jamie Doe, to gain a share of a $14 million Securities and Exchange Commission award granted to Block, but had kept its legal reasoning secret. Friday’s order was issued without comment.
While SEC whistleblowers are entitled to remain anonymous, Block and Barnes had identified themselves in a series of lawsuits and counterclaims in separate state and federal courts, a fact pointed out in a petition by Bloomberg’s attorney, Eric J. Feder of Davis Wright Tremaine. And courts routinely publish opinions involving the SEC whistleblower program without identifying the participants by name.
The opinion released Friday never mentions Block or Barnes by name, calling them instead “Claimant 1" and “Doe.”
“Doe has failed to show that the SEC acted arbitrarily or capriciously in concluding that his award application failed to meet the foregoing whistleblower criteria,” the court wrote.
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