Advocates for Justice

“Wildcatter” oil and gas prospecting companies and unscrupulous brokerage firms are riding the explosive growth of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” in the United States to reap sizable profits off unsuspecting Main Street investors, according to a recent investigative series report done by Reuters.  According to a recent report issued by Reuters, Ameriprise shaped deals to sell more securities potentially harming investors.  

It was publically revealed yesterday that the California Attorney General’s Office is joining a whistleblower case against BP (formerly British Petroleum) that accuses the oil company of massive overcharging of California cities, counties, universities, and government agencies on purchases of natural gas over the course of the past decade.

The Legislature has enacted several changes to the California Labor Code designed to protect employee-whistleblower activity. Many of these changes relate directly to areas in which CPM practices. The Legislature’s changes are beginning to pay real dividends to whistleblowers who expose the corporate wrongdoing of their employers.

In a recent op/ed in Salon, labor and consumer organizations teamed up to criticize the vast impact of “forced arbitration” clauses in consumer and employment contracts, and to call on Congress to act on behalf of the great majority of its constituents and ban the practice.

On October 29, 2014, the Ninth Circuit issued a published opinion in Malhotra v. Steinberg, et al. that contains a detailed discussion of the public disclosure bar, and the original source exception, of the False Claims Act. The opinion is helpful in reiterating the Ninth Circuit’s approach to the public disclosure bar, and provides a bit more guidance on a few open issues, including the definition of “outsiders” as it relates to the public disclosure bar. 

On November 6, 2014, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld bans on gay marriage in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The ruling in the consolidated appeal overturns four district court decisions that found the bans unconstitutional. Significantly, the Sixth Circuit’s opinion contradicts decisions from four other federal circuit courts of appeal finding similar bans unconstitutional and is the first time a federal circuit court has upheld a gay marriage ban after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013) (finding the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional). The United States Supreme Court has thus far declined to hear appeals from decisions finding the bans unconstitutional, but the Sixth Circuit’s decision creates a “circuit split,” making Supreme Court review likely.    

A recently published Ninth Circuit case interpreting the California False Claims Act proved relatively non-controversial, despite involving a dispute at the fringes of the abortion wars. In the case, Gonzalez v Planned Parenthood, 759 F.3d 1112 (9th Cir. 2014) (“Gonzalez”), a former Planned Parenthood director sued the organization’s Los Angeles branch under the federal False Claims Act and the California False Claims Act, alleging that Planned Parenthood overcharged California’s Medi-Cal program (specifically, Medi-Cal’s “Family PACT” program) for contraceptives provided to low-income individuals. The relator was represented in the case by the American Center for Law & Justice, a conservative Christian law firm founded by Pat Robertson. The lawsuit was presumably inspired (at least in part) by ideological disdain for the work of Planned Parenthood.

The Center for Investigative Reporting published a 4,000-word article yesterday detailing a Southern California medical equipment supplier’s scheme to use private plane rides, international vacations and cash-stuffed envelopes to recruit doctors to use his company to buy spinal surgery screws – many of which were apparently counterfeit. 

In a high-profile case with potentially national implications, a San Mateo County Superior Court judge sided in September with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy client Surfrider Foundation and ordered Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla to stop blocking public access to a Northern California beach used and enjoyed for nearly a century by families, fishermen, surfers, and other members of the community. Khosla had gated off a road leading from Highway One to the beach in 2010, two years after buying most of the land fronting the beach for $32.5 million.

Even as recent federal rulings threaten to narrow the scope of anti-retaliation protections provided to individuals who report violations of America’s securities law, the Dodd-Frank Act’s whistleblower program continues to grow – both in the raw number of apparent violations brought to the attention of federal authorities and in the size of monetary rewards issued to whistleblowers.