Reference no: EM131524710

This homework is about business laws:

Write, a judgment or opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court on the outcome of the case based on the facts and issue below.

FACTS:

• Respondent James Herman O'Hagan was a partner in the Law firm of Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• In July 1988, Grand Metropolitan PLC (Grand Met), a company based in London, England, retained Dorsey & Whitney as local counsel to represent Grand Met regarding a potential tender offer for the common stock of the Pillsbury Company, headquartered in Minneapolis.
• Both Grand Met and Dorsey & Whitney took precautions to protect the confidentiality of Grand Met's tender offer plans. O'Hagan did no work on the Grand Met representation.
• Dorsey & Whitney withdrew from representing Grand Met on September 9, 1988.
• Less than a month later, on October 4, 1988, Grand Met publicly announced its tender offer for Pillsbury stock.
• On August 18, 1988, while Dorsey & Whitney was still representing Grand Met, O'Hagan began purchasing call options for Pillsbury stock. Each option gave him the right to purchase 100 shares of Pillsbury stock by a specified date in September 1988. 
• Later in August and in September, O'Hagan made additional purchases of Pillsbury call options.
• By the end of September, he owned 2,500 unexpired Pillsbury options, apparently more than any other individual investor. O'Hagan also purchased, in September 1988, some 5,000 shares of Pillsbury common stock, at a price just under $39 per share.
• When Grand Met announced its tender offer in October, the price of Pillsbury stock rose to nearly $60 per share. O'Hagan then sold the Pillsbury call options and common stock, making a profit of more than $4.3 million.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initiated an investigation into O'Hagan's transactions, culminating in a 57-count indictment.
• The indictment alleged that O'Hagan defrauded his law firm and its client, Grand Met, by using for his own trading purposes material, nonpublic information regarding Grand Met's planned tender offer.

PROCEDURE: A jury convicted O'Hagan on all counts, and he was sentenced to prison. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed all of respondent's convictions for securities fraud.

ISSUE: Did O'Hagan through the trading of securities violate Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 when he misappropriated nonpublic information for his personal benefit?