A Southern District judge has dismissed allegations that a Chinese subsidiary of Siemens AG violated the Dodd-Frank Act, ruling that the law’s whistleblower protection provisions don’t apply extraterritorially.
In a 22-page opinion issued on Monday, Southern District Judge William Pauley III (See Profile) threw out an action brought under the anti-retaliation provision of Dodd-Frank by Meng-Lin Liu, a former compliance officer at Siemens China who says he lost his job after he exposed routine bribery. Siding with Siemens’ lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, Pauley determined that the anti-retaliation provision doesn’t protect overseas whistleblowers like Liu.
