In the Courts

On Feb. 1, 2010, in In re Grand Jury Subpoena Issued June 18, 2009, No. 09-3561-cv, the Second Circuit, in a per curiam opinion, held that a single-person corporation could not refuse to comply with a subpoena for production of corporate records by asserting the Fifth Amendment's “act of production” privilege. In its decision, the court extended its prior decision denying an exception to the collective-entity rule for corporations that were essentially single-person operations to the actual single-person corporation, finding that an intervening decision by the Supreme Court had not overturned the Second Circuit's earlier decision. The Second Circuit's decision affirmed a contempt order issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Account Services Corporation (ASC) and KJB Financial Corporation (KJB), for failure to comply with a grand jury subpoena duces tecum.