The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has ordered Norfolk Southern Railway Co. to pay $122,199 in compensatory and punitive damages as well as reasonable attorneys’ fees in a whistleblower retaliation case.  The whistleblower, a railroad employee, was injured while removing a spike from a rail line on May 13, 2009, but [...]

In Furland v. American Airlines, the Department of Labor Administrative Review Board (“ARB”) upheld the finding of an administrative law judge in this Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century (AIR21) case that a pilot engaged in protected activity under the federal aviation whistleblower law when he refused to fly after becoming ill from airline food he had eaten on an earlier flight, and when he later complained about the airline’s attempts to pressure him to fly when he was unfit to fly.

On June 24, 2011, the Department of Labor Administrative Review Board reversed and remanded the decision of an Administrative Law Judge who had found no causal link between the employee’s protected activity and the employer’s alleged retaliation. In doing so, the ARB held that the filing and litigation of a whistleblower complaint is itself a [...]

On June 29, 2011 the Administrative Review Board of the Department of Labor affirmed the findings of an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) who found that Navajo Express, Inc. had illegally terminated truck driver Naomi Clarke in retaliation for her refusal to drive a truck with a ventilation system that was causing her to inhale fiberglass [...]

A FINRA securities arbitration panel has ordered the Number Three US brokerage firm Wells Fargo Advisors and Wachovia Securities to pay nearly $7 million to a whistleblower who claims he was terminated in retaliation for cooperating with FINRA.  FINRA is the shorthand for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a non-profit regulatory agency paid for and [...]

On July 6, 2011 the United States Department of Labor has filed a complaint against Niles Family Dentistry in Niles, Ohio and its owner for hostile treatment of two of its employees in violation of OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Act.   According to a press release issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”), the dental practice’s owner, [...]

On June 28, 2011, David Simmons, a former Quality Assurance Supervisor for Sikorsky Global Helicopters (“SGH”), filed a whistleblower-retaliation charge against SGH, alleging that the company terminated him for complaining about extensive flight-safety issues and noncompliance with Federal Aviation Regulations at SGH’s Keystone Engine Services (“KES”) facility in Coatesville, PA.  Simmons filed his complaint with [...]

 A CPA has become the first recipient of a major award under the IRS’s whistleblower reward program. In an effort to reign in on corporate tax fraud, the IRS recently revised and expanded their whistleblower program, which previously mandated no reward, and attracted mostly small businesses and ex-spouses, to mandate a 15 to 30 percent [...]

Former Bush Administration United States Special Counsel Scott Bloch has been sentenced to one month in prison, thwarting a protracted attempt by Bloch’s legal team to demonstrate that the misdemeanor charge of contempt of Congress that Bloch plead guilty to did not carry a mandatory-minimum jail sentence.  Last Tuesday Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson rejected a [...]

An anonymous Wall Street banker was recently awarded $1.1 million under the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower program.  In 1999 the whistleblower brought information to the IRS that exposed fraudulent accounting schemes in which Bankers Trust and other Wall Street firms helped Enron in creating projects that artificially duplicated tax deductions, allowing Enron to generate [...]