Fired UBS Strategist Rejected by Supreme Court on Whistleblowing

(Bloomberg) — The US Supreme Court refused to revive a $900,000 jury verdict won by a former UBS Group AG research strategist who claimed he was fired for not skewing his reports to help the company’s business strategies.

Making no comment, the justices on Monday left intact an appeals court decision that said the jury instructions made it too easy for Trevor Murray to win on claims that UBS retaliated against him in violation of a federal investor-protection law.

Murray won a round in the fight last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act doesn’t require whistleblowers to prove they were the victims of intentional retaliation. That temporarily revived the verdict, but the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals then tossed it out a second time on different grounds in February.

Murray worked in support of UBS’s commercial mortgage-backed securities business, providing market reports for customers and potential customers.

He claimed in his lawsuit that the UBS trading desk for months tried to get him to be more upbeat in his assessments and smooth over concerns investors might have about participating in trades. Murray said he was fired less than two months after he reported the pressure campaign to his supervisor.

UBS said Murray’s termination was part of a broader staffing reduction driven by the bank’s financial difficulties at the time. UBS cited the impact of a $2 billion loss by a rogue trader at its London office five months before the firing.

The 2nd Circuit said on a 2-1 vote that the jury should have been required to find a clearer causal connection between protected whistleblowing activity and Murray’s firing.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted following the corporate fraud that toppled Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc.

The case is Murray v. UBS, 25-264.

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