Sarbanes-Oxley Act bars old claims

The Legal Intelligencer reports lawyers for the plaintiff\'s urged Judge Anita Brody to rely on the legislative history of the law which, they said, showed that Congress intended the new time limits to apply to any case filed after the statute was passed. Brody refused, saying ‘such an inquiry would be inappropriate’ since the US Supreme Court has held that there was a strong presumption against retroactive application of any new limitations period, and that if Congress wanted to override that presumption and set new time limits that effectively revive dead claims, it must do so ‘unambiguously’. The ruling applied to a suit brought by L-3 Communications, a defence contractor, which claimed it was the victim of a fraud scheme perpetrated by the top executives of a group of companies it acquired in 1998. Brody found that if the old time limits applied, the claims would be barred because the alleged fraud occurred in August 1998 when the merger took place, and was allegedly discovered in January 2002, but L-3 did not file its suit until July 2003. Full report in The Legal Intelligencer