Securities & Exchange Commission v. Vitesse Semiconductor Corp.

OPINION AND ORDER

JED S. RAKOFF, District Judge.

Pending before the Court is the joint proposal of plaintiff Securities and Exchange Commission (“S.E.C.”) and three of the five defendants — Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (“Vitesse”), Yatin D. Mody, and Nicole R. Kaplan — to approve Consent Judgments that would resolve the case as to these defendants. The proposal raises difficult questions of whether the S.E.C.’s practice of accepting settlements in which the defendants neither admit nor deny the S.E.C.’s allegations meets the standards necessary for approval by a district court.

The…