Forbes dismissed its longtime chief content officer, Randall Lane, in July after discovering the Randall Lane payment of about $6 million from RJ Shook, founder of Shook Research, a firm that has partnered with Forbes since 2016 on rankings of top wealth advisers. Lane, 58, spent 15 years at Forbes and had overseen editorial operations since 2017. He has characterized the transfer as a personal gift unrelated to his work, acknowledging he should have disclosed it and calling the lapse a serious error in judgment.
The episode has raised a key legal question. According to an employment attorney, Lane likely did not violate criminal law, although he could still face civil exposure if Forbes sues.
Shook’s payment surfaced after his company sold a majority stake to private equity firm PPC Enterprises last August. PPC’s review of Shook Research communications after the deal reportedly turned up the $6 million transfer.
Shook’s new management alerted Forbes, which confronted Lane in July. He confirmed receiving the money and was terminated. A Forbes spokesperson said the company acted immediately once the undisclosed conflict was identified and noted that Executive Editor Kerry Lauerman is overseeing editorial operations on an interim basis.
Randall Lane payment and the faithless servant doctrine
Richard Friedman, an employment attorney who represents executives in contract and separation matters, said Forbes was within its rights to fire Lane. He added that the company’s employee handbook, which requires permission for outside business activities and prohibits personal gain from company relationships, likely operates as a binding contract.
More broadly, he said employees owe fiduciary duties to their employers regardless of written policies. Friedman pointed to New York’s Faithless Servant doctrine, a long-standing common-law theory that permits employers to recover compensation from employees who act disloyally.
Courts have applied it to a wide range of conduct, including fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets, material misstatements or omissions about a company’s finances, and other acts detrimental to the employer. How far a clawback can reach varies.
In some cases, employers seek all compensation from the start of employment. In others, they pursue only pay earned during the period of disloyalty.
Friedman said large undisclosed payments from a business partner can influence, or appear to influence, an executive’s decisions regarding contracts, fees, or revenue allocation. In his words, an employee “can only have one master,” and a duty of loyalty runs to the employer alone.
A gift or a business expense?
Friedman said it appears Forbes had a policy requiring Lane to seek permission before accepting the payment. A compliant disclosure would have presented the situation in advance and asked to accept the gift.
Forbes could have refused, in which case Lane would have kept his job but not the money. What complicates Lane’s account, Friedman noted, is how the payment emerged.
PPC reportedly found a record of it on Shook Research’s systems and notified Forbes. If the transfer appeared in company accounting records, he said, it was likely treated as a business expense rather than a personal gift, which also raises potential tax implications due to the size of the sum.
Forbes probably will not sue
Despite the legal avenues available, Friedman doubts Forbes will file a lawsuit, suggesting the company may avoid prolonged publicity. Lane’s options to challenge his firing would hinge on whether an employment agreement with deferred compensation exists.
He said any claim that his conduct did not meet a for-cause standard would be difficult based on what has been reported. If Forbes did sue, Friedman said the company would likely argue that Lane violated written policies, breached contractual obligations via the handbook, breached fiduciary duties, and ran afoul of the Faithless Servant doctrine by entering an undisclosed financial arrangement with a business partner.
Determining damages would be complex. Discovery could probe when discussions of the payment began, potentially expanding any clawback period if talks predated the transfer.
A familiar pattern
Lane has previously written about similar dynamics. In a 2021 Forbes piece on Donald Trump’s fixation with wealth rankings, he recalled being offered a six-figure public relations role early in his career in exchange for improving a business figure’s standing.
Before returning to Forbes, Lane led Doubledown Media, which published titles including Trader Monthly and Dealmaker, and produced The Players Club with backing from former MLB player Lenny Dykstra. Lane later wrote that Dykstra had taken stock from a company to tout it to subscribers while obscuring the arrangement under another name, an episode also reported at the time by the New York Daily News.
Dykstra, reached for comment, said he had not spoken with Lane in years and declined to address the Forbes matter.
Rankings of top wealth advisers produced with Shook Research have helped shape how some investors and employees view compensation and financial planning, similar to how events like a potential SpaceX IPO lockup can reshape employee wealth planning.