Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Employees who notice something illegal or immoral going on at work are often made to choose between their conscience and their jobs. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act prohibits employers from retaliating against whistleblowers (those who bring illegal practices to the attention of a regulatory authority), but in practice, these laws rarely have any effect.
An example of this is the case of Johnny Burris. Mr. Burris worked as a broker for JPMorgan’s office in Sun City West, Arizona as a top producing broker and earned glowing performance reviews, at least for his first few years of employment there.
Most of Mr. Burris’s clients consisted of retirees who knew very little about the complicated financial markets, so Mr. Burris considered it part of his job to avoid any investment products which might be unsuitable for his clients, expensive, and/or underperforming. Some of these investment products that Mr. Burris considered allegedly unsuitable included products that JPMorgan offered, and his refusal to promote them to his clients started to draw some criticism from his superiors. Continue reading ›