News Coverage

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling has just set a crucial precedent for whistleblowers. Individuals willing to file lawsuits under the False Claims Act will now have four more years to do it.
A unanimous ruling in the case identified as Cochise Consultancy v. U.S. ex. rel. Hunt, held that whistleblowers can take advantage of an extended statute of limitations.
Under the False Claims Act, relators can file suit either within six years of the alleged violations or three years after...

Samantha Wu had high hopes when she left her small town in southern China to study at an American university. But she didn’t expect to be under investigation by the University of Maryland after a professor accused her and other Chinese students of cheating on an exam. Wu denies the accusation.
Wu is one of a number of Chinese students who reported that U.S. professors said their nationality made them more likely to cheat. But some professors insist they see many instances of Chinese...

The Problem It’s no secret that inefficiencies bog down the American healthcare system. Despite spending 50% more per capita on healthcare compared to the top 10 developed countries, the United States ranks dead last in overall healthcare performance. It has been estimated that over $765 billion a year in healthcare is wasted due to inefficient logistics, fraud, and unnecessary services. The FBI has also disclosed that fraudulent medical bills cost the industry up to $260 billion in...

Starwood Capital Group made a big bet on the U.S. retail market in November 2013. Barry Sternlicht’s private equity firm bought a 90 percent stake in seven malls from Westfield Group for $1.6 billion through an affiliated company.
Located in towns like Toledo, Ohio, and Olympia, Washington, the malls were filled with national brands and boasted an average occupancy rate of 96 percent — the kind of properties considered a very safe bet at the time.
But the retail market...

Freedom Mortgage Corp. lost separate bids to escape two putative class actions over allegedly unsolicited phone calls when a New Jersey federal judge ruled Thursday that the customers’ lawsuits supported their claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Simandle denied Freedom Mortgage’s motions to dismiss the proposed class actions alleging in part that the New Jersey-based business made such calls using an automatic telephone dialing...

Nowadays, whistleblowers are very much in the news. It was complaints from whistleblowers that precipitated the resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. July 30 has been designated by the U.S. Senate as “National Whistle Blower Appreciation Day.”
But being a whistleblower is often not appreciated at the time the whistle is blown.
Martin Edwin Andersen is one example. Andersen has been a whistleblower for much of his life, repeatedly...

Long-term care insurance consumers -- usually upper-middle age and older Americans -- face enough hurdles in finding the best policies. Complicated contracts, high fees and charges, and booming premiums await any long-term care insurance buyer.
On top of that lurks another, more sinister issue for buyers, and it's one of the worst forms of elder fraud -- long-term care insurance fraud.
It's a big problem, given the skyrocketing costs of long-term care services these days, and the...

Signals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over how seriously it takes cybersecurity, combined with a Supreme Court ruling on whistleblower protections, are putting pressure on companies to be more careful about how they deal with potential tipsters, lawyers say.
The securities regulator issued guidance in February on how companies should handle cybersecurity issues. In April it fined Altaba Inc., formerly Yahoo Inc., $35 million over its handling of a 2014 hack, marking the...

Latest Development: Uber Technologies Inc. faces a nationwide class action alleging the company illegally classifies its drivers as independent contractors and cheats them out of overtime wages and tips.

Potential Impact: The action could compel the courts to clarify whether gig economy companies such as Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, Upwork, Fiverr and Thumbtack can characterize their workers as independent contractors or traditional employees entitled to protections under federal labor laws....

• Claims taxpayer was warned by accountant of illegal conduct
• Appeal puts government at risk of losing first FBAR disclosure circuit court case

The CEO of a pharmaceutical manufacturing company acted recklessly when he failed to disclose a Swiss bank account he owned, and isn’t entitled to a refund on a penalty he paid for his failure, the government said....