The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a bid by a former UBS bond strategist to revive a $2.6 million jury award in his lawsuit accusing the Swiss bank of unlawfully firing him for refusing to publish misleading research reports.
The justices turned away whistleblower Trevor Murray’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that the Manhattan jury that decided in favor of him in 2020 had received flawed instructions from the trial judge about the legal standard for proving unlawful retaliation under U.S. law.
The Supreme Court had already issued one ruling in the case. The justices in 2024 reinstated the jury award after it was previously overturned by a lower court, deciding that financial whistleblowers only have to prove unequal treatment, and not that their employers had a retaliatory motive, to prevail in retaliation lawsuits.
Since that ruling, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February again threw out the award, finding that flawed jury instructions in the trial made it too easy to conclude that Murray’s whistleblowing contributed to the UBS decision to fire him.
Robert Herbst, Murray’s lawyer, said: “We are disappointed but no less dedicated to obtaining justice for Trevor Murray than we were when we tried the case the first time eight years ago.”
UBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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