Ministers also said legislation would be introduced next month to ensure that businesses will only be held liablefor civil damages in health and safety cases if they can be shown to have acted negligently.
In asking the Supreme Court to review the issue, Wal-Mart said the appeals court misapplied the standards for defining a class of plaintiffs, exposing it to punitive damages when it should beliable only for back pay.
If Apple is found tobeliable, the company could face claims fordamages in separate proceedings from a group of states that joined the Justice Department in the 2012 antitrust suit.
And a separate bill, the Crime and Courts Bill, will have amendments ensuring that newspapers who refused to join the new regulatory regime would be potentially liablefor exemplary damages if a claim was upheld against them.
This would ensure that newspapers who refuse to join the new regulatory regime will beliable - potentially - for exemplary damages if a claim is upheld against them.
At the very least, KPMG is almost certainly going to have to return the audit fees, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, and the firm may beliablefor other damages if the courts determine that the firm was in any way derelict in monitoring and supervising Mr. London, who was in charge of some 50 audit partners and 500 employees.