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Admissions of Guilt in Civil Enforcement Verity Winship University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 2018 Admissions of Guilt in Civil Enforcement Verity Winship Jennifer K. Robbennolt Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Winship, Verity and Robbennolt, Jennifer K., "Admissions of Guilt in Civil Enforcement" (2018). Minnesota Law Review. 100. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/100 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Article Admissions of Guilt in Civil Enforcement Verity Winship† & Jennifer K. Robbennolt†† Introduction ............................................................................. 1078 I. The Context of Civil Enforcement ................................... 1083 A. Agency Enforcement ................................................... 1083 B. The Role of Settlement ............................................... 1088 C. Consequences of Admissions Policy .......................... 1091 II. Admission Models ............................................................. 1095 A. No Admission .............................................................. 1096 1. Factual Allegations .............................................. 1097 2. Denial .................................................................... 1100 3. No Denial .............................................................. 1102 B. Admission .................................................................... 1103 1. Facts ...................................................................... 1104 2. Legal Violations .................................................... 1106 3. State of Mind ........................................................ 1107 III. Admissions of Wrongdoing in SEC Enforcement ........... 1109 A. The SEC’s “No-Admit-No-Deny” Policy ..................... 1109 B. Objections to the Policy .............................................. 1110 C. SEC’s Policy Change ................................................... 1112 D. SEC Admissions Practices ......................................... 1114 IV. The Role of Admissions in Settlement ............................ 1118 A. Value of Admissions to Agency and Public ............... 1119 1. Public Accountability ........................................... 1119 2. Deterrence ............................................................. 1120 3. Agency Legitimacy ............................................... 1124 B. Value of Admissions to Targets ................................. 1126 † Professor of Law, University of Illinois. †† Alice Curtis Campbell Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois. We are grateful for the comments of, and correspondence with, Miriam Baer, Sam Buell, Jackie Ross, the Brooklyn Law School faculty, and participants in the Colloquium on Law and Psychology at the UC Berke- ley School of Law. Our thanks go to Sarah Fox and Katie Kargl for their excel- lent research assistance. Copyright © 2018 by Verity Winship and Jennifer K. Robbennolt. 1077 1078 MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [102:1077 1. Denial .................................................................... 1127 2. Silence and No-Admit-No-Deny .......................... 1130 3. Admissions ............................................................ 1130 C. Negotiating Admissions ............................................. 1133 1. Admissions of Facts Versus Admissions of Legal Violations .............................................................. 1136 2. Admissions of State of Mind ................................ 1139 3. Agency Evidence of Target Wrongdoing ............. 1141 4. Negotiated Admissions ........................................ 1142 Conclusion ................................................................................ 1145 Judge Rakoff: “Do you admit the allegations?” Lawyer for defendant, Citigroup Global Markets: “We do not admit the allegations, your Honor. But if it’s any consolation, we do not deny them.”1 INTRODUCTION Opening fake accounts, secretly moving customer money, begging friends and family to open “ghost” accounts—these were all ways that Wells Fargo employees reportedly met ag- gressive sales quotas.2 “We were constantly told we would end up working for McDonald’s,” a former Wells Fargo employee told the Los Angeles Times when the story broke.3 “If we did not make the sales quotas . we had to stay for what felt like after-school detention.”4 Multiple civil authorities pursued the bank—the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the Los 5 Angeles City Attorney’s Office. These state and federal author- 1. Transcript of Oral Argument at 13, SEC v. Citigroup Glob. Mkts. Inc., 827 F. Supp. 2d 328, 332 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (No. 11 Civ. 7387 (JSR)), vacated, 752 F.3d 285 (2d Cir. 2014). 2. E. Scott Reckard, Wells Fargo’s Pressure-Cooker Sales Culture Comes at a Cost, L.A. TIMES (Dec. 21, 2013), http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi -wells-fargo-sale-pressure-20131222-story.html; Press Release, Consumer Fi- nancial Protection Bureau, “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Fines Wells Fargo $100 Million for Widespread Illegal Practice of Secretly Opening Unauthorized Accounts” (Sept. 8, 2016), http://www.consumerfinance.gov/ about-us/newsroom/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-fines-wells-fargo -100-million-widespread-illegal-practice-secretly-opening-unauthorized -accounts. 3. Reckard, supra note 2. 4. Id. 5. See Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, supra note 2 (stating that Wells Fargo will pay penalties to the OCC and the City and County of Los An- geles). 2018] ADMISSIONS OF GUILT 1079 ities ultimately resolved the matter in the way that most civil enforcement matters are resolved: by settlement. A key aspect of the settlement was whether the bank had to admit that it did something wrong. The Wells Fargo CEO testified before Congress: he was “deeply sorry,” although he also “want[ed] to make very clear that . [w]e never directed nor wanted our [team members] . to provide products and services to customers they did not want.”6 A full page adver- tisement declared that Wells Fargo was “[m]oving forward to make things right.”7 Despite these very public statements, the agreement with the CFPB and others was entered “without admitting or denying the findings of facts and conclusions of law.”8 It was entered, Wells Fargo stipulated, “in the interest of compliance and resolution of the matter.”9 The agreement with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office provided that the agreement “shall not constitute any evidence of admission of fault or concession of liability by Wells Fargo, either express or implied.”10 Perhaps with an eye to collateral consequences (es- pecially disqualification for certain business), the deal specified that the agreement did not amount to an admission of fact or 11 liability “showing moral turpitude.” Headlines following this 6. An Examination of Wells Fargo’s Unauthorized Accounts and the Reg- ulatory Response: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on Banking, Hous. & Urban Affairs, 114th Cong. 72 (2016) [hereinafter Wells Fargo Hearing] (statement of John Stumpf, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Wells Fargo & Company), https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-114shrg23001/pdf/CHRG-114shrg23001 .pdf; Jeff Cox, Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf Apologizes, Vows that Bank Will Do Better, CNBC (Sept. 20, 2016), http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/20/wells-fargo-ceo -stumpf-takes-stand-before-senate-expected-to-apologize.html. 7. Adrianne Pasquarelli, Wells Fargo Ramps up Marketing in Push To Regain Trust, ADAGE (Oct. 14, 2016), http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/ wells-fargo-ramp-marketing/306303. 8. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., No. 2016-CFPB-0015 (Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau Sept. 4, 2016) (consent order), http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/ documents/092016_cfpb_WFBconsentorder.pdf; Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., AA- EC-2016-67 (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Sept. 6, 2016) (consent order for a civil monetary penalty), https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news -releases/2016/nr-occ-2016-106a.pdf (“The Comptroller finds, and the Bank neither admits nor denies . .”). 9. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., No. 2016-CFPB-0015 (Consumer Fin. Prot. Bureau Sept. 4, 2016) (stipulation and consent), https://s3.amazonaws.com/ files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/092016_cfpb_WFBstipulation.pdf. 10. [Proposed] Stipulated Final Judgment at 3, State v. Wells Fargo & Co., No. BC580778 (Cal. Super. Ct. Sept. 1, 2016). The Los Angeles City At- torney’s website indicates that this is the judgment that was entered. See Pro- tecting Consumers—Wells Fargo, L.A. CITY ATT’Y, https://www.lacityattorney .org/allegations-against-wells-fargo (last visited Feb. 2, 2018). 11. [Proposed] Stipulated Final Judgment, supra note 10, at 13. 1080 MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW [102:1077 settlement declared that “Wells Fargo Offers Regrets, but Doesn’t Admit Misconduct.”12 Do the regulators’ actions against Wells Fargo “hold it ac- countable,” as the Comptroller of the Currency claimed in a congressional hearing?13 And, more particularly, what is the role of admissions of wrongdoing in civil settlements in holding settling enforcement targets accountable? The Wells Fargo set- tlement is one example of the type of civil enforcement that raises the question at the heart
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