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The New York Times Dealbook has an interesting article on why the SEC hasn’t sued any Lehman Brothers executives in connection with the 2008 collapse of that firm. The short answer: because they didn’t think they could prove those executives violated federal securities law.

The Times article is a strong reminder that business responsibility for a business’s collapse is not equivalent to a securities law violation and that the SEC’s scarce resources are best directed to violations it can prove. The SEC’s role is to enforce the law, not to satisfy the public clamor for a scapegoat.

The Times article is also an interesting story of how an SEC staff member, George S. Canellos, resisted the political pressure to bring a case. Canellos was the head of the SEC’s N.Y. office at the time and now heads the SEC’s enforcement division. According to the article, he faced strong pressure from then-Chair Mary Schapiro to bring a case, but refused.

The failure to find a case apparently wasn’t from lack of trying. According to the Times, the SEC reviewed more than 15 million documents and interviewed three dozen witnesses.

Following a hiatus of almost 2 years, Steve Bradford, Josh Fershee, Anne Tucker, and I are pleased to announce the grand re-opening of the BLPB.  We are excited to be joined by Marcia Narine, and also expect Eric Chaffee to be stopping by occasionally with contributions.  All the relevant profiles (except for Eric’s, which we hope to have available soon) can be found at the bottom of this blog.  I will leave it to each of my co-bloggers to provide additional information about themselves as they see fit.

Personally, I’d like to thank Jay Brown for allowing me to blog over at the Race to the Bottom these past two years.  While I am excited about returning here to “get the band back together,” I regret having to leave the RTTB (though I may still occasionally pop in over there, time permitting).  Jay is one of the true stars in corporate law, and I consider him a friend, mentor, and inspiration.

I’d also like to thank Paul Caron for welcoming us back, and note the updates to the Law Prof Network look great.

Finally, please drop me a line directly at spadfie@uakron.edu if you have any interest in guest-blogging, or…

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show this morning, BP CEO Tony Hayward stated that BP has “never in any sense sought to downplay this” disaster. This is hardly accurate, in my opinion. On May 18, Hayward said, “Everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest.”

Although I doubt it, at the time, he may have even been right. However, this is the essence of “downplaying” the disaster. It sure would have sounded better if he had said something like, “While we expect that the overall environmental impact will be very, very modest, we recognize it could be worse. That is why we’re putting all available resources behind getting this thing under control.”

At least now he is calling it an “environmental catastrophe” and I had been thinking that Hayward finally appears to understand the gravity of the situation. After watching the rest of the Today Show interview, I’m not so sure.

Hawyard went on to say that BP’s response to the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill was to “launch[] the largest response effort . . . this country has ever seen to a natural disaster.”

The thing…