On November 29, 2018, the SEC announced that it had settled charges with boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and music producer DJ Khaled for failing to disclose payments they received for promoting investments in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In the following guest post, John Reed Stark, the President of John Reed Stark Consulting and former Chief of the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement, takes a look at the SEC’s actions against Mayweather and Khaled and identifies some important takeaways from the SEC’s orders. I would like to thank John for his willingness to allow me to publish his article on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this site’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is John’s article.
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Since it first enacted the 
In a June 21, 2018 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the SEC’s administrative law judges (ALJs) are not merely “employees” but rather are “officers” who must be appointed to their position by the “Heads of Departments” under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The Court’s decision at one level represents a rather straightforward application of the Court’s existing case law regarding ALJs. However, the decision raises a number of troublesome issues for the SEC, and leaves a number of other important questions unanswered. The decision also raises a number of questions for other agencies as well. The ultimate questions in the wake of Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission may be whether and to what extent the SEC (and even perhaps other agencies) will continue to use administrative processes to pursue enforcement action. The Court’s opinion in the case can be found 
In a long line of cases, the U.S Supreme Court has grappled with the question of who can be held liable under the federal securities laws for fraudulent misrepresentations. Most recently, in the Janus Funds case, the Court has said that only a “maker” of a misrepresentation can be held liable in a private securities lawsuit. On June 18, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to examine whether a person who did not “make” a misrepresentation can nevertheless be held liable under the securities laws on a theory of scheme liability.
One of the cutting-edge legal issues – one that is raised in a number of pending securities class action lawsuits – is the question of whether cryptocurrencies are “securities” and therefore required to be registered with the SEC before they can be traded. Within this larger question are a host of related issues, perhaps the most interesting of which is the question whether digital currencies that act as “mediums of exchange” are securities, or rather are more like traditional currencies, which are exempt from the definition of securities. The answer to this question could have an enormous impact on the marketplace for digital currencies and could have significant liability implications in a number of pending actions and enforcement actions.
In the latest of several recent high court decisions addressing the questions of statutes of limitations and related questions of tolling, on June 11, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that equitable tolling principles do not apply to toll statutes of limitation to permit previously absent class members to bring a subsequent class action outside the applicable limitations period. This seemingly narrow ruling is consistent with the Court’s recent proclivity to provide sharper edges and cleaner lines to statutes of limitations issues and to reduce the likelihood that class securities claims may continue be filed after the end of the limitations period. The Supreme Court’s June 11, 2018 opinion in China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh can be found 
One of the trendy concepts in certain circles in recent years has been the idea of litigation management bylaws – that is, the adoption by company of bylaw provisions that help manage the company’s litigation risks. For example, one bylaw provision that has been widely adopted by publicly traded companies is a forum selection provision specifying a particular jurisdiction as the preferred forum for litigating shareholder disputes.