Hilbrecht & Associates, Chartered, lawyers in Las Vegas, NV, Nevada

Corporate Criminal Liability

Corporations were not initially held criminally responsible for corporate activities. A corporation was considered to be a legally fictitious entity, incapable of forming the mens rea necessary to commit a criminal act. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected this notion in 1909 in New York Central & Hudson River Railroad v. U.S. A railroad company employee paid rebates to shippers in violation of federal law. The court upheld the corporation's criminal conviction, finding no reason that corporations could not be held "responsible for and charged with the knowledge and purposes of their agents, acting within the authority conferred upon them." The Supreme Court concluded that criminal liability could be imputed to the corporation based on the benefit it received as a result of the criminal acts of its agents. The case and its progeny have essentially imported the doctrine of respondeat superior from tort law into the corporate criminal realm. A corporation may be convicted for its agent's unlawful acts when the agent acted within the scope of his or her actual or apparent authority. Another theory of corporate criminal liability is the "collective knowledge doctrine." As knowledge of criminal activity is often the scienter element of a particular crime, the requisite knowledge can be imputed to the corporation based on the collective knowledge of the directors and officers. More...

Rulemaking by the Securities and Exchange Commission

Federal agencies adopt rules to implement laws. Following the stock market crash in 1929, laws were passed to reform securities markets and to broaden the amount and accuracy of information to be made available to investors by issuers of securities. Those laws included the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Company Act of 1940. The more recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 provided additional requirements for corporate governance and disclosure of information.More...

Breakpoints in Mutual Fund Charges

Mutual funds may offer "breakpoints" in their front-end sales load. Thus, a fund that charges a fee of five percent for investments up to $25,000 may charge only four percent for investments from $25,000 to $50,000 and three percent for investments over $50,000. The fund has breakpoints at $25,000 and $50,000.More...

Arbitration of Securities Disputes

Although persons may not be required to arbitrate rather than litigate their claims, they may by contract agree to arbitrate any claims that arise under the contract. More...

Exchange-Traded Funds

Exchange-traded funds are open-ended registered investment companies regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The Securities and Exchange Commission has exempted exchange-traded funds from regulatory requirements in order to allow secondary trading on national exchanges of shares in exchange-traded funds. More...