The Supreme Court will hear Salman v. United States. Bloomberg News reports:
The justices will hear an appeal from Bassam Salman, an Illinois man convicted of using information leaked by a onetime Citigroup Inc. investment banker. Salman says the judges in his case set the bar too low for prosecutions stemming from information passed by a corporate insider to a friend, relative or business associate.
The main issue is whether prosecutors must show that the insider received a concrete benefit in exchange for passing on the information. A San Francisco-based federal appeals court ruled in Salman's case that wasn't required, splitting with a New York-based panel that reached the opposite conclusion seven months earlier.
If the Supreme Court can lend some clarity here, it would be helpful, though perhaps not as helpful as a law from Congress reining in the freelancing by the SEC and the Justice Department on this issue. I've been reading Payback: The Conspiracy To Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution, by Daniel Fischel, and it is amazing to me how little things have changed since that book came out more than 20 years ago.
