By Steve Kardell | Published September 18, 2017 | Posted in Whistleblower Litigation | Tagged Tags: False Claims Act, Medicare, whistleblowers |
False Claims Act Suit Against Genentech Halted
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently halted a False Claims Act lawsuit filed against Genentech Inc. In the suit, the plaintiff claimed the company defrauded Medicare by hiding some side effects of its cancer drug Avastin. The court stated the whistleblower did not show that a failure to report the safety Read More
Read MoreDOJ Claims UnitedHealth Group Overbilled Medicare by Hundreds of Millions
The U.S. Department of Justice recently sued UnitedHealth Group, claiming the company’s senior executives were aware it was overbilling Medicare by hundreds of millions of dollars annually and that they put a stop to a repayment plan in 2014 to meet revenue expectations. The official complaint was filed in May in the U.S. District Court Read More
Read MoreWells Fargo Claws Back Millions from Former Executives After Accounts Scandal
In the wake of its major scandal involving millions of unauthorized accounts opened in its customers’ names, Wells Fargo is “clawing back” more than $75 million from former top executives. The bank announced the effort in April after an internal investigation found that its former executives did not act quickly enough to look into the Read More
Read MoreSEC Backs Protections in Place for Internal Whistleblowers
Some new guidance provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this summer gave some additional reinforcement to the agency’s stance that whistleblowers who report misconduct through their company’s internal channels rather than immediately going to the SEC are still protected by the Dodd-Frank Act’s retaliation provisions. However, there is still some debate over the Read More
Read MoreHair Stylist Awarded $80,000 in Punitive Damages for Role as Whistleblower
The court in Peasley v. Regis Corporation recently resulted in the jury presenting an $80,000 award in punitive damages to the plaintiff, Valerie Peasley, who worked as a hairstylist under the employment of the Regis Corporation. According to Peasley, she had informed her manager at the salon that several coworkers were both using and selling Read More
Read MoreNinth Circuit Decision Makes it Easier for Whistleblowers to Bring Qui Tam Actions
In a new, important development for how False Claims Act cases will proceed, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned precedent that had limited whistleblowers’ ability to recover money reimbursed to the federal government under the FCA to a more significant extent than a large number of other circuits. The ruling came in the Read More
Read MoreManager at Philadelphia VA Uses Twitter to Threaten Whistleblowers
Veterans Administration locations across the country have been the subject of a great deal of scrutiny over the past year and half. A recent report reveals a manager at the Philadelphia Department of Veterans Affairs’ regional office tweeted out threats to whistleblowers last year on the same day investigators arrived at the location to inspect Read More
Read MoreNDAA Continues to Provide Whistleblowers Much-Needed Protection
July 2015 marked the second anniversary of when the whistleblower protection statutes of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) went into effect. The law has provided a number of new protections for whistleblowers, shielding them from retaliation by employers — especially from government grantees and contractors. So what types of protections does the NDAA Read More
Read MoreUS Marshals Whistleblowers Claim Officials Use Freedom of Information Act for Retaliation
Multiple whistleblowers have come forward from the U.S. Marshals Service, claiming that leadership within the agency uses requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to retaliate against individuals because they sought to report various abuses of power. Among the claims made by the whistleblowers is that the U.S. Marshals Service has a major problem Read More
Read MoreSEC Launches Investigation into Employment Contracts that Prevent Whistleblowing
A February 25 article in the Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will begin investigating the kinds of agreements that certain companies make with their employees. The article states that the agency has already sent out several requests to different companies for years’ worth of employment contracts, nondisclosure agreements Read More
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