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David Woodcock, the regional director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth office, plans to join Jones Day as a partner in its securities litigation practice at the end of June, the law firm announced Thursday.

No Texas lawyers were on the deal, but New York and Washington, D.C. attorneys from Houston-based Baker Botts advised Liberty.

In 2005, a Chicago man filed a lawsuit against Plano-based Wellness International, a maker of nutritional products. For a decade, the case alleging fraud bounced around. Nearly every court that review the case tossed it for lack of evidence.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court may have finally ended the litigation by issuing a precedent-setting decision stating that federal bankruptcy judges are able to decide legal issues outside of their normal authority if the parties in the case consent. This article examines the decision and the history behind it.

Texas justices, in its recent opinion in Shell Oil v. Writt, provide comfort that information shared with the government will not form the basis of a defamation claim by an individual identified in that information (at least in Texas), thus alleviating the potentially untenable position faced by companies that ostensibly had to choose between seeking cooperation credit and defending related defamation claims. The opinion also serves as an important reminder that concrete steps should be taken to preserve claims of privilege during the course of the FCPA investigation.