Breach of Fiduciary Duty Lawyer

Simply put, “fiduciary duty” means putting your client’s interests ahead of your own, yet the Department of Labor wasted many thousands of lawyers’ hours and killed forests of trees generating paper about this, still coming up with no meaningful definition. The SEC was supposed to handle this issue some twenty years ago, and utterly failed to do so. Thus, it’s an “eye of the beholder” issue for FINRA arbitration panels and one for the lawyers to fight out in each case. Brokerage firms often argue that the duty ends once a security is purchased; claimants’ attorneys argue that such duty doesn’t end as long as the broker-client relationship is active.

FINRA arbitration cases don’t result in outcomes that are taken as precedent, like court cases are, so this issue has to be proven either way in each case. There is no uniform standard.