Shareholders of Facebook stock sued the social media giant alleging that Facebook made misleading claims about its use of user data, which blew up this month when its alleged relationship to a Trump-linked data firm was made public.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said whistleblower protections apply not just to publicly traded companies but also to subcontractors that do business with them.
An Anchorage, Alaska man was awarded $3.5 million after a jury concluded he was wrongfully terminated by his supervisors in 2008. The Anchorage Daily News reported that the whistleblower managed approximately 40 workers for Shaw Environment and Infrastructure, which had been under contract to uphold facilities at two military bases.
A former UBS banker who provided information on the firm’s vast business of helping wealthy Americans hide their assets from the Internal Revenue Service has received a $104 million whistleblower reward, which his lawyers said was the largest in U.S. history. Bradley Birkenfeld’s tips helped pave the way for a 2009 settlement between the U.S. government and UBS under which the bank agreed to pay $780 million in penalties and turn over the account information of thousands
On August 21, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it has awarded its first whistleblower bounty, just over one year after the SEC’s Dodd-Frank whistleblower rules became effective. The SEC’s Claims Review Staff issued a short order, Release No. 34-67698, granting the whistleblower’s award, which notes that the SEC declined to award a claim to a second whistleblower involved in the action.
Court documents filed this week show the giant pharmaceutical firm Omnicare Inc. has agreed to settle a whistleblower lawsuit involving millions of dollars in alleged kickbacks to one of Illinois’ most prominent nursing home families. While Omnicare reached a financial settlement in principle, the terms have not been publicly disclosed. It is not clear if Omnicare’s board has approved the agreement, although a lawyer involved in the case suggested that will likely happen.
