Soon after Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) in March 2020, the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) moved quickly to address potential COVID-19 related fraud. One area of early focus was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a program under the CARES Act that provides loans to small businesses to help pay employees. The Fraud Section set up a team devoted to PPP fraud and, within two months of the passage of the CARES Act, had charged several individuals.

Last summer, my colleague C.J. Summers and I posted a report about Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association, a Seventh Circuit case in which we had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.

Although the Supreme Court identified three guideposts for evaluating whether a punitive award is unconstitutionally excessive 23 years ago in BMW v. Gore and refined those guideposts 16 years ago in State Farm v.

A bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of California recently issued a decision that is sure to raise appellate eyebrows.