6/17/2015 Four more banks have agreed to settlements in a massive, two-year long ordeal regarding manipulation of the $5.3 trillion currency market. HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and BNP Paribas all signed settlement agreements this week. HSBC agreed on a $285 million settlement, Barclays settled for $375 million, Goldman Sachs is finalizing an agreement estimated to
6/13/2015 Tuesday’s, $663 million settlement against guardrail manufacturer Trinity industries includes the largest-ever award given to a whistle-blower under the False-Claims Act, a whopping $199 million given to former competitor, Virginian Joshua Harman. Harman sued on behalf of the government claiming that Trinity defrauded taxpayers by failing to notify the Federal Highway Administration of a
5/27/2015 In a decision that helps to define the statute of limitations for whistleblower cases, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday, May 26th that whistleblowers do not get extra time to file false claims complaints during a time of war. The case revolves around former Iraq contractor, Benjamin Carter, whose 2011 complaint under review alleges
5/26/2015 Perhaps no industry besides investment banks has been hit as hard by the federal court system than tobacco over the past several years. A pair of recent appeals rulings, however, indicates a substantial turn in the industry’s decades-long financial flogging. On Friday, the D.C. Court of Appeals delivered a mixed-ruling, in which some
5/25/2015 A lawsuit will continue in U.S. District Court in Minnesota regarding Target’s widespread 2013 pre-holiday data breach as banks rejected a $19 million settlement proposed last month. Over 40 million debit and credit cards were compromised during the breach, putting millions of cardholders’ information at risk. The settlement set aside by Target would have
5/19/2015 Many people were caught off-guard in 2010 by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC ruling that in many ways equated the amount of political speech one was able to express by the amount of money the speaker was able to spend. The New York Times, however, notes that the Court made a similar
5/18/15 If there were any doubts about whether or not many banks broke the law while selling bad mortgages to investors or if their clients were merely victims of bad timing, Manhattan Federal Court Judge, Denise L. Cote, would like to eliminate them. Finding Japanese bank, Nomura Holdings and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
5/11/2015 In a decision that turns a bad situation even worse for the state of Illinois, the state’s Supreme Court unanimously declared a law to reduce the amount of pension benefits for state workers to be unconstitutional. The controversial law titled SB 1, signed in December, 2013 by then-Governor; Pat Quinn, reduced compounded cost-of-living increases
5/8/2015 Contrary to yesterday’s post regarding the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that warrantless access to phone records is not an invasion of privacy; a 3-judge panel from the 2nd Circuit ruled unanimously on Thursday, May 07th that the National Security Agency (NSA) spying program is illegal. Although both programs base their justification on
5/7/2015 A panel of judges ruled 9-2 in the 11th District U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta that cell phone customers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning searches of phone records. The Tuesday, May 5th ruling concerns the case of Miami resident, Quartavious Davis, who was convicted of several felonies, including robbery