Last month we told the story of a Texas business that managed to clobber the U.S. Department of Labor in court over its challenge to the company’s use of independent contractors. The Fifth Circuit granted the company a substantial award in legal fees to punish the department for its bad faith in litigation.
Now, Coyote relates a personal encounter in which he runs into a man at a Houston steakhouse who turned out to be the owner of that company, Gate Guard:
I refused to believe him until he showed me a picture of him with the check. He had had it blown up into one of those huge golf tournament checks. I told him he was my hero and tried to buy him drinks the rest of the night, but when I got up to leave, I found he had actually paid my tab. I drank that evening on the Department of Labor’s dime, I guess.
One Comment
As a commenter on the Coyote Blog noted, while the Department of Labor was fined, it was the taxpayers who actually paid the fine. Other than being a taxpayer, those responsible for the “investigation and prosecution [which] violated the department’s internal procedures and ethical litigation practices,” those who did the deed are not going to be punished, pay a part of the fine directly or anything like that.
Instead, those who did the acts and their supervisors will continue to wort at the DOL which will then come before Congress asking for an increase in funding since the fine took away money they could have used to (illegally?) prosecute and persecute other businesses.
There will never be changes in government malfeasance and illegal / non-ethical acts until those actually doing those acts are held accountable.