On June 19, James Gandolfini, the hefty award-winning actor who portrayed Tony Soprano in "The Sopranos," died at 51, apparently of a heart attack, while on vacation in Italy.
The risk now, with the hefty award against Microsoft, is that many more firms will consider launching similar cases as the potential rewards are evidently so great.
On Monday at the El Rey Theatre, Lynch presented the ex-Beatle with a hefty award in recognition of Starr's "lifetime of Peace & Love" during an evening that featured an abundance of the drummer's friends and fans.
Under the final rules governing the program, the S.E.C is allowed to dish out heftier awards to employees who first report securities violations to corporate compliance departments.
The press release nods to the board of Longitude, which is taken as a case where a hefty prize was awarded for solving a clear social problem (although, as Becky Higgitt described this morning, the story is more complicated than it first appears).
More than 1,150 such lawsuits have been filed in federal and state courts, a trend that has not gone unnoticed in the business world, not only because companies are well aware of the negative publicity lawsuits can generate but also because numerous plaintiffs have walked away with hefty damage awards.
In between, the presenters and honorees did their best to hoist the hefty glass awards.
The government has suggested allowing auditors to write limited-liability clauses into their contracts, and a hefty damages award against Ernst & Young would provide further ammunition for both sides of that debate.
The agency on Wednesday proposed a crackdown on hefty compensation awarded at big banks, brokerage firms and hedge funds - a move intended to rein in pay packages that encouraged excessive risk-taking before the financial crisis.
