Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt praised Scalia as a brilliant lawyer who has single-handedly done more than anyone, including Congress, to ensure that federal agencies engage in informed rule-making that withstands careful scrutiny.
He called the MetLife verdict “icing on an already impressive and substantial” cake for the lawyer.
In fights against financial regulations in federal court, Pitt said he thinks Scalia has litigated nine cases and only lost two—involving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s registration requirements for mutual funds and the CFTC’s margin requirements for swap and futures derivatives.
Insurer Primerica, an anti-fiduciary client of Scalia, is infamous for bringing in part-time firefighters, teachers and other workers with no financial services training to sell annuities to friends, said Kate McBride, chair of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard.
While noting Scalia’s acumen, Stoltmann said the more the litigator wins (and he has won often), the more individual investors will lose.