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Whistleblower Awarded $51 Million After Reporting Illegal Kickbacks and Bribery
A whistleblower will collect $51 million after alerting authorities to a scheme of illegal kickbacks and bribes at Olympus Corporation of the Americas, a medical device company. In total, the company will have to pay $646 million in fines after admitting to the wrongdoing. Approximately half of that money is a criminal penalty for violating […]
Latest SEC Whistleblower Award Goes to 3 People
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to hand out large financial awards to whistleblowers under its program created by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. Any whistleblower tips that lead to enforcement action worth more than $1 million in monetary damages make whistleblowers eligible for a 10 to 30 percent cut of the collected […]
New Potential Whistleblower Protection Bill Moves Forward
U.S. Rep. Rod Blum of Iowa has created a new piece of potential legislation that would better protect federal employees who blow the whistle on wrongdoing within their agencies. This new bill is called the Thoroughly Investigating Retaliation Against Whistleblowers Act, and it already has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors and unanimous support from the […]
JP Morgan Ordered to Reinstate Whistleblower and Pay Awards
Federal labor officials have ordered JPMorgan Chase Bank to reinstate an employee who was the victim of wrongful termination after he raised some concerns about the firm’s repeated failure to properly report its financial transactions to federal regulators. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) announced the decision Monday, March 14. In addition to giving […]
OSHA Eases Up on Pleading Standards for Whistleblower Claims
Large employers could expect to see an even greater increase in whistleblower complaints after new guidance from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration relaxes some of the standards for investigators who are given the task of determining if violations of whistleblower law exist. The revisions to OSHA’s Whistleblower Investigations Manual went into effect on January […]
Whistleblower Alleges Retaliation After Reporting Issues with Flint Water Last Year
Miguel Del Toral works as a regulations manager for the Environmental Protection Agency and was assigned to investigate the water issues in Flint, Michigan in early 2015. According to Del Toral and various congressional investigators, he ended up being punished by the EPA for blowing the whistle on the water crisis — well before it […]
Common Steps Whistleblowers Take When Filing Claims Against Employers
When an employee alleges that he or she faced retaliation after attempting to report misconduct within your organization, there are a number of protections afforded to that person. There are also several key steps that individual (along with an attorney) are likely to take as the claim proceeds. These steps include the following: Proving the […]
District Court Decides to Reject SOX Claim on Several Grounds
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a ruling in Hill v. Komatsu America Corp. that involved the dismissal of a Sarbanes-Oxley Act retaliation claim on summary judgment on multiple grounds. The plaintiff in the case raised concerns to the CEO of the Komatsu America Corp. that the company’s repair and […]
Will the Supreme Court Finally Settle Arguments over Whistleblower Protections?
There’s a chance that the scope of the whistleblower protections outlined in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 could be analyzed and determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. Recently, a Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision created a split in the judges, which means intervention from the Supreme Court could […]
Whistleblower Fights for $1.4 Billion FCA Claim Against AT&T to Continue
In the face of a bid for a dismissal, a government contractor for the city of Los Angeles is fighting to have his False Claims Act suit worth $1.4 billion against AT&T proceed. In the case, he alleges the company purposefully denied the various federal government discounts given out to commercial customers. The whistleblower argued […]
