In a May 5 article published by Corporate Counsel, government enforcement counsel Jonathan Schmidt (San Francisco) and government enforcement associate Kevin Daly (San Francisco) discuss recent examples of efforts by federal prosecutors to expand the reach of criminal liability in the corporate context. The article explains how corporate criminal liability has traditionally been imputed to the corporation when a single employee commits a crime while acting in the scope of employment and acting with the intent to benefit the corporation; however, federal prosecutors have recently advanced aggressive alternate theories that hold corporations liable even without a culpable act by an individual employee.
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