Photo of Erica T. Jones

Erica Jones is an associate in the firm’s Litigation Department, where her practice encompasses a range of business, regulatory, and corporate governance matters. She has worked extensively in defense of securities class actions, derivative suits, and white collar criminal matters involving investigations by the SEC, DOJ, and state attorneys’ offices. In addition, Erica has advised on antitrust matters involving allegations of price fixing, restraint of supply, monopolization, group boycott, bid rigging, and collusion across industries that include agriculture and health care. She is also a member of the litigation team representing the Financial Oversight and Management Board in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Erica maintains an active, diverse pro bono practice, with a focus on immigration law, compassionate release and habeas corpus, and racial justice. She is an associate trustee with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and has been recognized by the District of Columbia Courts’ Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll. Erica was also one of a few women selected to be a Protégée for Proskauer’s Women Sponsorship Program, an initiative for high performing midlevel lawyers that champions emerging leaders.

Erica strives to stay on the cutting edge of developing areas of law through her membership in Proskauer’s COVID-19 Task Force, ESG Working Group, and Private Credit Litigation Group.  Erica’s ability to advocate for her clients is further bolstered by her recent Master’s Degree in Accounting from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School with a concentration in Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Erica was an intern with the Department of Justice in the Constitutional and Specialized Tort Litigation Section. Outside of her career in the law, Erica has been featured on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, teaching ballroom dance to students at Lighthouse for the Blind.

The FTC and SEC have their own administrative dispute resolution regime, presided over by their own administrative judges (“ALJs”). Until now, those regimes were virtually immune from attack on a constitutional basis, because any such challenge had to wait until appeal to the federal courts (which only happened after a full trial and appeal to the agency itself). No longer. On April 14, 2023, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Securities Exchange Act do not create an alternative review scheme in which constitutional challenges must first go through the agencies, and only later receive federal court review in a court of appeals. 

On January 11, 2023, Elizabeth Wilkins, the FTC’s Director of the Office of Policy Planning, spoke to the Capitol Forum about the FTC’s proposed rule to ban non-compete agreements.  This conversation was the most significant discussion of the proposed rule by the FTC since it was announced on January 5.  Below are the four most salient takeaways.

In times of crisis, fraudsters attempt to exploit the latest news developments to lure investors into scams, and the once-in-a-century global health crisis we are currently facing is no exception. On February 4, 2020, the SEC noted in an Investor Alert that it was aware of a number of web-based promotions claiming that the products or services of publicly-traded companies could prevent, detect, or cure COVID-19—and that the stock of these companies would skyrocket as a result. The Investor Alert warned market participants to be vigilant and put publicly-traded companies on notice that the Commission is watching.

This month, the Second Circuit weighed in on open issues relating to discovery under 28 U.S.C. § 1782. Section 1782 allows federal courts to order entities that “reside[] or [are] found” in their district to produce evidence for use in a proceeding before “a foreign or international tribunal” upon request by “any interested person.”