Randall Lane probably didn’t break the law by accepting $6 million while working at Forbes, but he may still pay a price under a 140-year-old doctrine

Forbes fired its longtime chief content officer, Randall Lane, in July after discovering he had received an undisclosed payment of about $6 million from RJ Shook, the founder of Shook Research, a firm that has partnered with Forbes since 2016 to publish its rankings of top wealth advisers.

Lane, 58, worked at Forbes for 15 years and had overseen the magazine’s editorial operations since 2017.

The law says Lane may get away with it, too—unless Forbes sues him.

Lane has described the payment as a personal gift, unconnected to his work, thanking him for years of informal advice he gave Shook after the two men met on a Forbes-organized humanitarian trip to Liberia in 2013.

“I made a mistake, and I take responsibility for it,” Lane told the New York Times , which first reported his firing.

“I should have disclosed the gift, and failing to was a serious error in judgment.” The payment came to light only because Shook sold a majority stake in his company to the private equity firm PPC Enterprises last August, and PPC’s staff found a record of the $6 million payment while reviewing Shook Research’s email correspondence after the deal closed.

Shook’s new management flagged it to Forbes, which confronted Lane in July.

He acknowledged the payment and was fired.

A Forbes spokesperson told Fortune : “When this undisclosed conflict of interest was brought to our attention, we examined the situation closely and took the appropriate action immediately.

We will not comment further per company policy regarding the confidentiality of personnel information and other considerations.

We have a strong editorial leadership team in place, including Kerry Lauerman, Executive Editor, Forbes, who is overseeing editorial operations in the interim.

Forbes remains focused on delivering trusted journalism and world-class storytelling across our platforms.” A faithless servant doctrine But the more interesting question, legally, isn’t whether Forbes was justified in firing Lane.

It’s whether Lane broke any criminal law, and the answer, according to one employment attorney, is probably not.

What he likely violated is a New York common-law doctrine dating back more than a century that requires employees to remain loyal to their employers.