By Marius Meland (April 27, 2006, 12:00 AM EDT) -- In a case of first impression, on March 23, 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice ("DOJ") could bring criminal antitrust charges against a company that had previously been granted amnesty under the DOJ Amnesty Program. The Court's decision in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. United States, No. 05-1480, significantly undermines the DOJ Amnesty Program, which functions properly only upon the trust of the amnesty applicant that the government will live up to its obligations. It is noteworthy that the rescission of amnesty in Stolt-Nielsen was not based upon the company's failure to fully cooperate or provide relevant information and documents about the unlawful conduct in that case and that the rescission came only after the government used the information and documents provided by Stolt-Nielsen to obtain guilty pleas from competitors and prison sentences for individual executives at those companies along with fines totaling $62 million. Instead, the rescission of amnesty purportedly was based on an after-the-fact assessment by the government that the criminal conduct did not end at the time represented by the company. The Antitrust Division's decision to rescind amnesty coupled with the opinion issued by the Third Circuit will have a significant chilling effect on future decisions of companies to enter the Amnesty Program....