Pratik Shah Quoted by Law360 on SCOTUS Sarbanes-Oxley Act ‘Fish’ Ruling

Law360, for its article “Attorneys React To High Court’s Sarbanes-Oxley ‘Fish’ Ruling,” quoted Akin Gump Supreme Court and appellate practice co-head Pratik Shah on the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision in John L. Yates v. United States, which ruled that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s anti-shredding provision does not apply to all physical evidence.

Shah said that what is potentially most significant about the Court’s decision is “what it says about the justices’ approach to statutory interpretation.” He added, “Interestingly, the chief justice joined Justice Ginsburg’s plurality opinion adopting a contextual approach to statutory interpretation that relied heavily on ‘the broader context of the statute as a whole,’ whereas Justice Kagan penned a dissenting opinion that relied foremost on the plain meaning of the term 'tangible object' in isolation.”

He also questioned whether the decision will affect other cases, specifically, “[W]hether this has any implications for the statutory interpretation question in the highly anticipated Affordable Care Act case, King v. Burwell.”