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165 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online 1 (2016-2017)

handle is hein.journals/pennumbra165 and id is 1 raw text is: 










ESSAY


            REFRAMING UNITED STATES v. SALMAN



                         ZACHARY   J. GUBLERt


   If a corporate insider breaches a confidence to his employer by passing
along nonpublic information to a family member, who then uses it to profit
in the stock market, can it be inferred that the insider must have received
some  sort of personal benefit in exchange for that tip? That's the issue in
United States v. Salman,1 a once-in-a-decade insider trading case that the
Supreme  Court will hear in its 2016 Term. If the issue sounds narrow, that's
because it is. In part, however, this narrowness is the result of how the case
has been framed thus far. All parties involved, including the Court, seem to
assume  that one must prove a personal benefit in order to establish liability
when  insider trading involves a tip. That was true once. But the Court's own
insider trading  jurisprudence  has  moved   beyond   the logic  of that
requirement. The Court would do well to acknowledge this fact, thereby bringing
much  needed clarity to a notoriously messy and unpredictable area of law.
   Salman  involves an investment banker, Maher Kara, who  tipped off his
brother, Michael, about upcoming transactions involving the bank's clients.2
In addition to trading on that information himself, Michael passed it along
to the Karas' future brother-in-law, Salman, who executed nearly identical
trades.3 The question on appeal to the Ninth Circuit was whether the brothers'
close-knit relationship was alone sufficient to support the inference that Maher
shared the information with Michael in exchange for a personal benefit.4
   The  answer  to that question seemed to be no-at  least if the Ninth
Circuit were to rely on a recently decided Second Circuit case, United States


    t Professor, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
    1 792 F.3d to87 (9th Cir. 2015), cert. granted, 136 S. Ct. 899 (2016) (mem.).
    2 Id. at to88-89.
    3 Id.
    4 Id. at to90.


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