Mitchell on Law
Winter 2008WILLIAM MITCHELL COLLEGE OF LAW MAGAZINE SAINT PAUL | MINNESOTA
Balancing Public Good and Personal Rights
Thomas Sjoblom '78
Washington, D.C.
Whether he's working for the SEC or defending clients in insider trading cases, William Mitchell alumnus Thomas V. Sjoblom's innovative approaches have earned respect among colleagues–and courtroom opponents.
By Erin Peterson
PDF, 2 pages
Thomas V. Sjoblom ’78 had his share of tough trials when he was a Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice prosecutor, but perhaps no trial was as grueling as the three weeks in April 2003 spent in federal court in Birmingham defending Richard Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth. Scrushy, the first of several high-profile CEOs tried under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, called on Sjoblom to help him, in part, get access to his $150 million in assets that had been frozen by the federal government.
“I worked 421 hours that month,” Sjoblom said, recalling 20-hour days of reviewing documents, talking to witnesses, and dealing with the crush of national media attention. “It was the most intellectually, physically, emotionally, and psychologically challenging drama I’ve been involved in.”
But the work paid off. Sjoblom and Scrushy prevailed in that case. When Scrushy asked if he could use his bank accounts frozen by the U.S. government, “I told [Scrushy] that as far as I knew, he was the only person in the United States who had an order from the United States District Court that said his money was his,” he said.
While Scrushy was later found guilty of charges ranging from bribery to mail fraud, those weeks gave Sjoblom perspective on the fine line between public rights and individual ones.
“When you’re a prosecutor, you think in terms of public good, but when you’re involved from the other side, you become very attuned to personal rights,” he added. “You see how this process affects personal rights, Fifth Amendment rights, and rights to due process of law.”
Sjoblom is deeply sensitive to both sides after spending two decades at the SEC prosecuting insider trading, financial fraud, and other securities frauds—the cases he now spends his days defending against.
His work on a wide variety of cases has earned kudos from those who know him best: former colleague (and William Mitchell alum) Christopher Bebel ’85 calls him among “the most tenacious, determined litigators that anyone will ever come across.”
At William Mitchell, Sjoblom developed an interest in the stock market and insider trading, and just days after taking the Minnesota bar exam, he packed his bags, rented a U-Haul, and headed to Washington, D.C., to get an advanced degree in securities law at Georgetown and to work for the SEC. Though he had been to the city just once before— when he played his trombone on the Capitol steps as part of a high school marching band trip—he found a place to call home.
He joined the SEC in 1979, serving in several roles but focusing primarily on market manipulation, where he helped make new laws and create new precedent.
Sjoblom left for private practice in 1999, and his deep knowledge of the SEC helped him develop a list of high-profile clients at Proskauer Rose, including Martin Armstrong, CEO and chairman of Princeton Economics International and Princeton Global Management. Armstrong, who is currently serving five years on criminal securities fraud, spent more than seven years in prison for contempt of court after he refused to turn over documents, which Sjoblom argues is an inappropriate use of governmental power. “He was in jail for seven years without a hearing,” says Sjoblom. “They tried to apply the thumb screws to get him to plead or fold in the litigation. I have attacked the court’s use of civil contempt as a constitutional issue, and we now have a petition in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Hopefully, we’ll get this changed.”
No matter what happens in the Armstrong case, Sjoblom says he’s grateful for the opportunities to be a part of cutting-edge issues both at the SEC and in private practice. “I’ve had an extremely interesting legal career,” he says. “I’ve had a real opportunity to be a creative lawyer at the highest levels.”