Showing posts with label Internal Investigations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internal Investigations. Show all posts

Friday, May 17, 2013

Interesting Article With Inviting Opening on Upjohn Warnings (5/17/13)

Professional and law student readers will likely know what "Upjohn warnings" are.  In the classic internal investigation, lawyers representing the entity may interview individuals within the entity.  In order to insure that the individuals are not confused about who the investigating lawyers represent -- they represent the entity and not the individual -- good form and ethics require that the lawyers give adequate notice to the individual.  The notice is commonly referred to as "Upjohn warnings."  See Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383 (1981).  I previously wrote on the issue Upjohn Warnings in Entity Investigations (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 10/14/09), here.

The current New York Times Magazine has an interesting article which begins with an Upjohn warning.  Anita Raghavan, Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros (NYT 5/17/13), here.  I excerpt that opening:
Late one Friday morning, Rajat Gupta was rushing through security at Philadelphia International Airport, carry-on in tow, when his cellphone rang. When Gupta heard from Goldman Sachs, on whose board he sat, it was often from its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein. But on this morning, it was Gregory K. Palm, his old Harvard Business School classmate and the bank’s general counsel, on the line. Palm sounded unusually serious. So Gupta asked if he could call him back from the other side of security. 
When he did, Palm quickly made two odd disclosures. First, he told Gupta that he had arranged for a colleague to listen in on their conversation. Then he said, “We are representing the corporation, and not you.” Palm wanted to make sure that there was no doubt that this was not a privileged conversation. If the matter evolved into something bigger, their discussion could be handed over to law-enforcement officers.
As Gupta listened, Palm stuck to the script that he worked out beforehand. “What can you tell me about Raj Rajaratnam, and have you ever provided him with information about what we do?” he asked.