News

The National Law Journal has named Partner Anthony Maneiro a Rising Star of the Plaintiffs’ Bar as part of its Elite Trial Lawyers awards for 2024. 

David Kovel was quoted today in a Wall Street Journal article discussing the increasing popularity and success of whistleblower programs both in the United States and internationally.  “There seems to be a growing recognition that these programs work, if whistleblowers are paid,” he noted.
 

On May 9th, 2024, Partner Randall Fox spoke at the first annual Central New York False Claims Act Symposium.  Mr. Fox spoke on a panel entitled Finding Clients, Preparing Cases, and Adding Value: The Role of the Relator’s Counsel in FCA Cases, and was joined by co-panelists Erica Hitchings, Esq., of Whistleblower Law Collaborative, LLC and Andrew Miller, Esq., of Baron & Budd, P.C.
 

Tax violations have received unique treatment in the whistleblower world. The federal government’s primary whistleblower statute, the False Claims Act, bars cases alleging violations of federal tax laws. Only in 2006 did Congress provide for the creation of an agency-based tax whistleblower program, administered within the Internal Revenue Service, in an effort to collect unpaid taxes.

Newsday has published an article covering the results of a New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) probe, initiated in 2021, concerning the conduct of Covanta, a waste incineration company, at its Brookhaven landfill in Westbury, Long Island between 2007 and 2013.   The probe, which was initiated further to a case brought by KM whistleblower client Patrick Fahey and, later, a Newsday investigation of the alleged conduct, found that the company had indeed repeatedly violated environmental law.

On February 8, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected efforts by employers to impose new hurdles to whistleblower retaliation claims. For whistleblower retaliation claims under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Court rejected an argument by employers that tried to read into the law a requirement that did not exist in the language of the Act. See Murray v. UBS Sec., LLC, No. 22-660, 2024 WL 478566, at *1 (U.S. Feb. 8, 2024).