Villanueva v. Core Laboratories NV and Saybolt de Columbia Limitada

Responding to an invitation from the Administrative Review Board, NCLC urged the Board to hold that the “whistleblower” provision in Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) does not apply extraterritorially, and that nothing in Section 929A of the Dodd-Frank Act extends the jurisdiction of SOX Section 806 extraterritorially. The case arises out of a whistleblower complaint brought by a foreign national employed by a foreign company in a foreign country against the subsidiary and its U.S. parent. In its brief, NCLC argued that in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, the U.S. Supreme Court re-affirmed the longstanding presumption that a U.S. statute does not apply extraterritorially absent an affirmative indication by Congress, and that in this case, Congress did not affirmatively extend the jurisdiction of SOX or Dodd-Frank. NCLC argued that improperly extending coverage of SOX overseas would inadvertently provide foreign nationals who happen to work for U.S. subsidiaries overseas with U.S. labor claims despite the dissimilarity between foreign working conditions and those in the U.S. Such a ruling would subject foreign companies to conflicting legal standards, and would be an affront to the sovereignty of host countries.

This case has not yet been decided.

Amicus brief filed 8/23/11.