Whistleblower Law Blog

TweetOn January 18, 2012, a jury for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida found TD Bank liable for engaging in fraudulent activity and ordered the company to pay $67 million in damages to the victims of the Ponzi scheme. Texas firm Coquina Investments filed a lawsuit against TD Bank in May [...]

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TweetThe U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last week ordered AirTran Airways, a subsidiary of Dallas- based Southwest Airlines Co., to reinstate a former pilot who was fired in 2007 after he filed numerous reports of mechanical malfunctions. OSHA found that AirTran violated the whistleblower provision of the Wendell H. Ford [...]

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TweetOn January 19, 2012 Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, announced that it had agreed to pay $158 million to settle a Medicaid fraud lawsuit in Texas which alleged that the company improperly marketed its antipsychotic drug Risperdal causing the state to overpay for the drug. The lawsuit alleges that the company [...]

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TweetElmwood Place, Ohio Police Sergeant Gary Darty filed a lawsuit two weeks ago in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against Chief William Peskin, who Darty claims retaliated against him after he disclosed to local officials that Peskin had engaged in police misconduct. Darty wrote a letter to the Elmwood Place [...]

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TweetOn January 11, 20101, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Prolerized New England Co. LLC, a recycling company in Everett, Massachusetts, for ten serious workplace safety violations and proposed that the company pay $70,000 in fines. OSHA investigated Prolerized’s Schnitzer Northeast facility in Everett, Massachusetts after an incident in September 2011 in which [...]

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TweetOn December 29, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that GE Healthcare Inc. agreed to pay thirty million dollars to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit  in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Amersham Health Inc., a holding company of  GE Healthcare. The DOJ alleged that from 2000 [...]

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TweetThe Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently issued 13 citations to LaBolt Farmers Grain Company, Inc. for exposing workers to unsafe conditions.  OSHA fined Labolt $95,920 for the cited violations.  LaBolt, based in South Dakota, allegedly failed to neutralize an auger, which severely injured a worker’s leg during a moving bin sweep. As a [...]

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TweetLast month, Louisiana Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System (“LAMPERS”) filed a securities class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY Mellon) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The lawsuit filed by LAMPERS, discussed in an article published by [...]

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Tweet On December 21, 2011 the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the Department of Labor ordered Union Pacific Railroad. Co. to rehire a former employee after an unlawful termination. The employee, who remains unidentified due to OSHA policy, filed a whistleblower complaint against Union Pacific after the company suspended then fired [...]

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Tweet In U.S. ex rel. McNulty v. Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc., the United States District court for the Eastern District of Michigan held that a whistleblower’s severance agreement releasing all claims against the employer does not bar qui tam claims where the government was unaware of the underlying fraudulent activity when the severance agreement was [...]

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TweetLast week, India’s largest drug manufacturer, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd., announced that it had entered into a consent decree with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and had set aside a provision of $500 million to cover any liability arising out of a separate investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The consent decree comes after [...]

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TweetLast week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Stiefel Laboratories Inc. (Stiefel Labs), a subsidiary of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, and the company’s former chairman and chief executive officer Charles Stiefel with defrauding employees and company shareholders by allegedly making stock buybacks at significantly undervalued prices. The SEC alleges that Stiefel Labs failed to report certain [...]

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Tweet On December 8, 2011, the United States Tax Court issued an opinion in Whistleblower v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue granting an IRS whistleblower’s motion for a protective order permitting the whistleblower to maintain his or her anonymity.  The court stated: We conclude that granting [the whistleblower's] request for anonymity strikes a reasonable balance between [the [...]

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TweetRoy Fastabend, a welder and inspector, alleges that he was fired after reporting that in order to save time and money, a subcontractor cut corners in the construction of the new stadium that will be home to the Florida Marlins.  Fastabend claims to have witnessed  Mike Garcia, a fellow inspector , routinely ignoring engineering specifications [...]

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TweetAccording to a recent study commissioned by Labaton Sucharow LLP, a securities and antitrust law firm, approximately three-quarter of Americans say that they would be willing to report wrongdoing in the workplace, as long as they were protected against retaliation, could remain anonymous, and would receive a monetary reward. The “Ethics and Action Survey,” conducted [...]

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Tweet  The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is scheduled to meet with representatives of the U.S. Air Force and Office of Special Counsel in the next few days to investigate the mishandling of remains at the military mortuary in Dover, Delaware. The committee requested that by December 9th, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta submit [...]

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TweetThis week Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that he would not seek a 17th term in office and would retire from the House of Representatives at the end of his current term. Rep. Frank served as the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011 and co-authored the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street [...]

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TweetEarlier this month, the Navy Department in charge of security clearances reinstated the top secret security clearance of Franz Gayl, a civilian science and technology advisor for the Marine Corps. Gayl was placed on administrative leave for criticizing military leaders and allegedly stealing classified information. According to the Associated Press: Beginning in 2007, Gayl accused [...]

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TweetThe U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) announced its conclusion last week that the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) violated the Whistleblower Protection Act when it retaliated against Diem-Thi Le for blowing the whistle on fraudulent DCAA practices. Ms. Le worked for the DCAA as a Senior Auditor for 17 years. In September 2005 Le [...]

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TweetCynthia Ferguson, an independent truck driver with over 15 years of experience, recently prevailed in a retaliation claim against New Prime Inc., a Missouri-based trucking company, under the whistleblower provisions of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA). New Prime terminated Ferguson after she refused to follow its dispatcher’s order to continue driving on a hazardous [...]

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TweetThe Employment Law Group® principal attorneys David Scher and R. Scott Oswald wrote an article entitled “Blowing the Whistle,”  which appeared in the October 2011 edition of California Lawyer.  In the article, Scher and Oswald discuss the California Whistleblower Protection Act (CWPA), referring to it as a “robust law that…has limitations and administrative hurdles.” They [...]

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TweetThe U.S. Department of Labor used its authority under OSHA Section 11(c) of the Discrimination against Employees under OSHA Act of 1970 to order Union Pacific Railroad to pay a total of $400,000 in punitive damages, $90,315 in compensatory damages, $34,900 in attorney fees, and more than $90,000 in back wages to three whistleblowers.  Union [...]

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TweetWebinar: Using New Developments In Whistleblower Laws To Your Client’s Advantage March 10, 2011 11:00 a.m. Pacific/2:00p.m. ET/1:00p.m. CT/ 12:00 MT Congress recently enacted several new robust whistleblower reward and protection laws, and strengthened existing whistleblower laws. This webinar will address new developments in whistleblower law, including recent decisions strengthening the rights of federal employee [...]

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TweetThe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued new rules that now permit whistleblowers to be rewarded for reporting a company’s illegal tax scheme that leads to ill-gotten tax refunds or credits.  Under the IRS’s whistleblower program, whistleblowers can be rewarded up to 30% of the funds recouped in return for reporting tax fraud.  For more [...]

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TweetToday President Obama has signed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which imposes stricter food safety standards and grants the Food and Drug Administration greater authority to regulate tainted food.  The FMSA was prompted in part by numerous instances of fatal food contamination that revealed insufficient regulation and oversight of food production, including outbreaks [...]

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