On June 30, 2017, Ford & Diulio PC Partner Kristopher Diulio obtained a resounding victory for former Edward Jones broker Ryan Flynn in front of a three-person Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Panel. Flynn, a broker with more than 13 years’ experience, brought the action seeking compensation for and expungement of defamatory statements recorded by Edward Jones in his regulatory records.
Flynn had been terminated in February 2016 regarding accounts opened in November 2015. As attorney Kristopher Diulio established during arbitration, the accounts were opened willingly and voluntarily. Although many of the accounts remained unfunded at the time of Flynn’s termination, the FINRA panel found that “there was no [Edward Jones] written policy or procedure that required accounts to be funded within any specific time period.” As a result, the panel concluded that Flynn had “violated no investment-related, statute, regulation, rule or industry standard of conduct.”
In addition to ordering Edwards Jones to remove the defamatory language from Flynn’s regulatory record, the arbitrators ordered Edward Jones to pay the former broker $82,540 in compensatory damages, along with his entire $67,460 legal bill and $5,000 of punitive damages for violating a California labor law.
For more information, contact Ford & Diulio PC’s experienced attorneys at 714-450-6830 or kdiulio@forddiulio.com