The third-party question comes in a case before the Supreme Court. The high court is reviewing whether vendors that did business with Charter Communications Inc. (CHTRcharter communications inc (CHTR) can be held liable for allegedly helping the company inflate its financial results.

Meanwhile, high-profile plaintiffs lawyer William Lerach is asking the Supreme Court to review a case that involves investment bankers who worked with Enron Corp. He is alleging that several Wall Street firms should be held liable for Enron's accounting fraud because they financed transactions Enron used to inflate its financial results

The Commission's complaint in this action charges Scrushy with directing a $2.6 billion financial fraud at the HealthSouth Corporation during the years 1996 through 2002....

The Complaint alleges that, at Scrushy's direction, HealthSouth's overstated its revenue by more than $2.6 billion from the second quarter of 1996 through the third quarter of 2002. This overstatement led directly to quarterly and annual overstatements of net income and retained earnings. The Commission's complaint charges that, by the end of 2002, HealthSouth was claiming to have over $1.5 billion in accumulated retained earnings, when in fact the Company had operated at a significant loss over its entire corporate history. The HealthSouth fraud resulted in one of the largest accounting restatements in American corporate history.

Scrushy was acquitted in 2005 on criminal charges of wire and mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for his role in overstating HealthSouth's earnings.

He was, however, convicted last year on federal bribery and fraud charges for paying campaign debts of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in exchange for a seat on a state-operated review board that regulates Alabama hospitals. Siegelman was also convicted in that case and both could face up to 30 years in prison.

Former Qwest Communications chief executive Joseph Nacchio was found guilty last week on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading.

Nacchio will remain free on a $2 million bond, pending an appeal.

The guilty counts revolve around the ex-CEO’s sale of $52 million in Qwest shares from April 26 to May 29, 2001. He had been accused of selling more than $100 million worth of Qwest stock in the first few months of 2001, even while knowing that the company could not meet the ambitious sales and earnings targets he had set. A federal investigation found that Qwest falsely reported sales as recurring revenue between April 1999 and March 2002 to meet those targets; in the process, the company improperly reported $3 billion in revenues.

The government chose to accuse Nacchio only of insider trading, rather than get into the more complicated issues surrounding the company's accounting. Nacchio still faces a civil suit in connection with the insider-trading case.

Nacchio is scheduled to be sentenced on July 27. The convictions carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and $1 million in fines for each of the 19 counts.

Spear & Jackson's former chief executive, Dennis Crowley, has already settled with the SEC in a related fraud case, agreeing to pay more than $6.1 million.

Lawyers for Park and Cantley did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Spear & Jackson manufactures and distributes hand tools, lawn and garden tools, industrial magnets and meteorology tools.

The SEC said that between February 2002 and July 2003, Park and Cantley executed numerous trades in Spear & Jackson stock, despite obvious red flags. Proceeds from the trades were about $2.5 million.

On several occasions, former CEO Crowley gave Park and Cantley sell orders on Spear & Jackson stock for three British Virgin Islands companies that he secretly controlled, the SEC said.

The SEC said Park and Cantley filled the orders knowing that Crowley was the CEO of Spear & Jackson and that the British Virgin Islands companies' accounts traded only in the stock, often buying and selling shares on a daily basis.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has lost its bid with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to not submit a shareholder proposal at this year’s annual shareholders meeting.

The National Legal and Policy Center said Tuesday it had been notified by the SEC that Wal-Mart will be required to submit an NLPC-sponsored proposal asking the company to disclose its charitable giving.

Wal-Mart had appealed to the SEC to exclude the resolution but was denied.

The National Legal and Policy Center said it is critical of Wal-Mart in four areas: health care, racial preferences, environmental alarmism and culture wars.

Wal-Mart Vice President and corporate general counsel Jeffrey Gearhart reportedly phoned the Policy Center on April 4 to “apologize” in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article that reported that some shareholder groups were possible targets of Wal-Mart’s security unit.

Wal-Mart’s shareholders meeting will take place June 1 in Fayetteville.

The SEC said yesterday it will work to resolve conflicts between the proposals over the issue of symbols with three or fewer characters. The NYSE and other exchanges are pushing to limit the use of one-, two-and three-character symbols to those listing markets that have traditionally used them.

Nasdaq and other self-regulatory organizations are trying to permit any listing market to use one-, two-, three-, four- or five-character symbols, allowing companies to move their securities onto the Nasdaq while retaining their ticker symbols.

The SEC said it plans to publish the proposals for comment and "will resolve the conflicts ... as fairly and expeditiously as possible." A spokesperson did not know when the issue would be decided.

The investor protection agency asked the exchanges in February 2005 to work together to develop a national plan for reserving, selecting and allocating securities symbols.

"Securities symbols are an important part of a listed company's identity and developing a formal process to reserve, select and allocate symbols ... will help promote a fair and orderly national market system and prevent investor confusion," said SEC Market Regulation Director Eric Sirri.

Following the SEC request to formalize the symbol allocation system, Nasdaq announced its intention to begin listing companies with three or less symbols. Last month, Delta Financial Corp. became the first company to trade on the Nasdaq with a three-character symbol – DFC – after a proposal to list that specific company was approved. Nasdaq moved a step further with a March 29 proposal to the SEC that would explicitly permit the display of three-character symbols on its exchange. The SEC will consider the proposal after the public comment period ends April 25.