- “How Operation Choke Point Hurts the Unbanked” [former FDIC chairman William Isaac, American Banker]
- A nation of snitches: “U.S. rules would expand white collar crime informers” [Reuters]
- Courts should stop giving deference to agency interpretations of criminal law: “Justice Scalia’s shot across the SEC’s bow re insider trading” [Bainbridge] Judge Rakoff criticizes SEC for bringing so many enforcement proceedings to in-house adjudicators [Reuters, earlier]
- Monitor envy: “The biggest U.S. banks have 100 or more on-site examiners from an array of regulators” and now New York’s financial regulator wants to get into the act [WSJ]
- Seventh Circuit finds Bank of America entitled to ask loan applicants about expected continuing entitlement to disability benefits, but in the mean time bank agrees in DoJ settlement to cease such inquiries [Easterbrook opinion in Wigginton v. Bank of America, see last page]
- Two SEC commissioners warn that campaigned-for “fair fund” to compensate investors in CR Intrinsic inside trading case “likely to benefit only class-action attorneys and the fund’s administrators” [Daniel Gallagher and Michael Piwowar, WSJ]
- “U.S. veterans sue [major European] banks, claim they should pay for Iraq attacks” [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
Posts Tagged ‘whistleblowers’
Banking and finance roundup
- Corporate charter revocation, a goofy cause, naturally enjoys support of RFK Jr. [Bainbridge, more]
- Jury finds Arab Bank liable in terror finance lawsuit [Daniel Fisher first, second, third posts; Kevin Funnell first, second posts]
- “And since most cases do settle, the scope of the law is actually being determined by the DOJ rather than the courts.” [Thomas Vartanian, American Banker] “Lloyds settlement latest example of the shadow regulatory state” [James Copland, City A.M.]
- Gideon Kanner is covering the AIG trial that just started;
- Do the benefits of mandatory investor disclosures outweigh the costs? [Elisabeth de Fontenay, Regulation (PDF) via Matthew Feeney]
- Albany lawprofs on board with scheme to expropriate underwater mortgages through eminent domain and compensate just 60 percent of face value [SSRN, earlier]
- Transparency in whistleblowing: we’ll see what the SEC wants us to see [Daniel Fisher]
“Justice Department Urges Banks to Implicate Employees”
“The Justice Department has a suggestion for banks hoping to avoid criminal charges: Rat out your employees.” By agreeing to throw individuals under the bus, the company as a whole will qualify for valuable cooperation credits. [Ben Protess, New York Times “DealBook”] On a similar culture-of-informants theme, Eric Holder is proposing to further boost bounties for Wall Street informants into more massive contingency-fee territory: “Mr. Holder will urge Congress to allow bigger whistleblower rewards under the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act…. Current law caps any Firrea whistleblower payment at $1.6 million.” [Wall Street Journal, earlier coverage and specifically]
Judge to Food and Water Watch: put that in your whistle
We’ve occasionally taken note that relators stepping forward under whistleblower laws are not always the public benefactors implied by the term whistleblower. Now here’s this from a suit that a former contractor filed, teaming up with well-connected environmental group Food and Water Watch [Bloomberg]:
“BP never misrepresented — much less knowingly distorted what it was doing,” U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes in Houston said today in a 10-page summary ruling, finding that the case was ultimately about “paperwork wrinkles” instead of engineering shortcuts.
Abbott and the environmentalists “have not blown a whistle,” he said. “They have blown their own horn.”
Why one New Jersey man doesn’t fight
A successful whistleblower, he’s featured on the reality-TV show “Real Housewives of New Jersey” and one can only commend his pacific spirit, at least as regards physical combat:
I don’t fight. I think it’s stupid. I’m trained as an attorney. If I want to hurt you, I’m going to sue you. I’m going to leverage your house. I’m gonna give you three years of hell in a courtroom. I’m going to bleed you dry financially, and I’m going to humiliate you as I depose you for eight hours and make you my bitch.
New at Reason: Bigger bounties for tax tipsters
[cross-posted and slightly adapted from Cato at Liberty]
I’ve got a guest post up at Reason on how bounty-seeking informants are bypassing the Internal Revenue Service tipster-reward program in favor of selected state False Claims Acts, such as New York’s, which enable richer recoveries for disloyal employees and others who charge defendants with underpaying taxes. Excerpt:
Will the spread of a culture of informants sow distrust and disloyalty in the workplace, while encouraging dissident executives and their lawyers to shake settlements out of risk- and publicity-averse targets by seizing on doubtful, gray-area legal theories? That’s part of the game too. Lately hedge funds and litigation finance firms have moved in to bankroll the filing of likely “whistleblower” cases. …
…by getting pro-plaintiff laws through the legislature in just a few states—New York liberalized its law four years ago—advocates can set the stage for a nationwide informant push.
In Illinois, a single Chicago lawyer was reported in 2012 to have used that state’s whistleblower law to file at least 238 lawsuits against retailers, pocketing millions in settlements, over alleged failure to charge sales tax on shipping-and-handling.
Whole thing here.
P.S. More recent coverage of the runaway False Claims Act train: “Repeat whistleblowers reap millions of dollars in false-claims suits” [ABA Journal] David Ogden testifies for the U.S. Chamber on what needs to happen with the federal FCA [House Judiciary] “UK Commission Takes A Pass On U.S.-Style Whistleblower Bounties” [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
State versions of the False Claims Act
The Chamber has been tracking this major engine of contingency-fee litigation as it jumps from federal practice to the realm of similar state laws vigorously lobbied for by the plaintiff’s bar. I have an opinion piece in the Baltimore Business Journal on the Maryland version, which 1) nearly passed this year, 2) would go further than the federal law in some vital respects, and 3) has become an issue in a closely watched primary contest.
Qui tam suit against Taiwan-owned pipe maker
Daniel Fisher at Forbes gives the manufacturer’s side of the story behind a massive whistleblower suit seeking billions from J.M. Eagle over its supply of plastic pipe to public water and utility systems. Qui tam lawyers Phillips & Cohen give their side of the story here. Here’s Fisher on the law firm’s success:
The firm was founded by John Phillips, who as a congressional staffer helped draft a 1986 law that made it easier to pursue whistleblower cases. He subsequently earned enough to become a major Democratic Party donor and now serves as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy.
Update: Phillips & Cohen writes to say that the above quotation “contains an error: John Phillips was never a congressional staffer.”
Rat out your AirBnB-using neighbors
Win cash rewards! Under a proposed initiative in San Francisco, neighborhood snoop/informants could pocket 30 percent of fines and taxes imposed [David Kravets, Ars Technica]
“Lawsuit Accuses Whistleblower Law Firm Of Coaching Employee To Steal Documents”
Following its loss in a California trial, J.M. Eagle, a large manufacturer of industrial pipe, is pushing back hard against its qui tam legal adversaries. [Daniel Fisher/Forbes, Plastics News] Earlier on the False Claims Act here and here.