Despite finding flaws in the jury instructions, the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday left in place a significant chunk of a jury verdict that former Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. general counsel Sanford “Sandy” Wadler won against the company in a 2017 whistleblower trial.

Wadler was awarded $11 million in damages after a San Francisco federal jury found in February 2017 that the company had fired him in retaliation for raising concerns internally about potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act within Bio-Rad's China operations.

In a 23-page published decision, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel issued a mixed ruling that left standing the jury's award of $5 million in punitive damages and $2.96 million in compensatory damages. The panel, however, found that U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero, who oversaw the trial, erred in a section of the jury instructions that listed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's anti-bribery and books-and-records provisions as “rules or regulations of the SEC,” falling under Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The FCPA, the court clarified, is a statute.