What started off as a media dream story (with the words “Rupert Murdoch,” “employs” and “hacker” all in the same headline) ended on a very anticlimactic, and somewhat humorous, note. Readers might remember the DISH Network lawsuit that hoped to receive nearly $1 billion in damages from
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Last year, J&J sued the American Red Cross, alleging that the humanitarian organization unlawfully licensed its famous logo to companies that directly compete with J&J (we blogged about it here). Last week, a federal judge threw out the majority of
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Willbros Group, Inc. and its subsidiary, Willbros International, agreed to pay $32.3 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve allegations of FCPA violations. Of that
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A Portland jury awarded plaintiffs $28 million today in a now four-year-old class-action antitrust lawsuit against North American lumber company Weyerhaeuser. The jury said that the company violated antitrust laws through high prices and buying unnecessary amounts of lumber to prevent their competition from getting
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Though the two transatlantic rivals may be bitterly fighting for the rights to a U.S. government contract, Boeing and Airbus do see eye-to-eye on one critical issue: cutting the carbon dioxide emissions from their planes. Both companies are aggressively working towards developing
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EchoStar Communications, the parent company of DISH Network, filed a corporate espionage lawsuit against News Corp’s NDS Group, alleging that the firm hired one of the “two best hackers in the world” to hack into DISH’s satellite network and steal the company’s security codes, according to a report by Reuters. NDS, which provides various [...]
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FCPA investigations are a dime a dozen these days, but a new Deloitte poll shows that most companies don’t seem to be reacting. The study found that only 32 percent of respondents to the Deloitte online poll acknowledged that they were stepping up their internal FCPA controls to
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A new bill that will further regulate the federal acquisition process, called The Close the Contractor Fraud Loophole Act, was approved by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, according to a report by Federal Computer Week, and is now
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More proof that price-fixing can take place in any industry: the owner of Adult Fire, an Australian company that puts on various X-rated strip shows for men and women, sued two of its Sydney rivals, Bombshells and Sex Bomb Promotions, for price-fixing. Sadly for Adult Fire the case was “quickly dismissed” after Bombshells and [...]
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The CEO of Denver-based Grynberg Productions is trying a new strategy to escape possible FCPA violations: suing a bunch of his rivals. This month Jack Grynberg, the eponymous chairman of the oil company, sued British oil company BP, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, Former BP Chief Executive John Browne, Norway’s Statoil and others, accusing [...]
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The South African Competition Commission decided that there have been so many reports of price fixing involving producers of bread, milk and other food items that they’re just going to go ahead and probe the entire South African food industry, according to a report by sabcnews.com. The Commission will focus primarily
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A Thai Member of Parliament (MP) and a newspaper critic face millions of dollars in damages and significant prison time after being sued for libel by Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, according to a story by the Guardian Newspaper. Both were sued for saying that Tesco, known as Tesco Lotus in Thailand, is expanding [...]
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A former Kelly Services employee, Lynn Noyes, was awarded $6.5 million by a Sacramento federal jury on Friday after suing the company for reverse religious discrimination. She argued that a less qualified employee earned the manager position that she was seeking because he was a member of
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Who says random airport searches don’t work? United States customs officials discovered that Hanjuan Jin, 37, a China-born U.S. citizen, was allegedly trying to leak confidential trade secrets from her former U.S. employer to a China-based rival when they searched her luggage at
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Two weeks ago, in the last edition of Ethisphere Magazine we rated and ranked the ethics programs of some of the largest U.S. government contractors. IBM was
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A new law in the United Kingdom will protect employees from sexual harassment beyond just coworkers and bosses, now extending to “customers, suppliers and others they encounter in the course of their work,” according to a story in the UK’s Guardian. Well, technically the punishment still goes to employers if they are aware of [...]
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Thanks to a settlement announced last Thursday, 3M Company will have to change the labels of their tape products and pony up nearly $700,000 for allegedly misrepresenting the physical dimensions of their tape by six percent. 3M was accused of mislabeling its products by Fresno, California’s Division of Measure Standards, which brought suit against
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A whopper of a sentence came in on Monday for the Chinese-born engineer who last May was convicted of conspiring to hand over U.S. military secrets to China. Chi Mak, 67, was given 24 1/2 years for smuggling top secret data, acting as an unregistered foreign agent in the U.S., attempting to violate export [...]
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Indiana resident James M. DiBlasio woke up to more than a hangover the morning after a three-day drinking binge. At some point during the 72 hours that he was drunk he managed to hack into the Denver-based server of his employer, Ski.com, and change various data such as flight reservations and contact information. [...]
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Either investigative techniques used to uncover FCPA violations are improving, more companies are doing it or it’s just getting more attention from the DOJ. But whatever the reason, FCPA cases are a dime a dozen these days. The most recent alleged violator: Shell Oil. The company is being looked into by the Department of Justice [...]
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Tipping is an activity so fervently argued and debated in the United States that entire books have been published on tipping etiquette. Those who have worked for tips argue for it, those that haven’t argue against it, and both sides tend to leave the debate unsettled and more angry than when they started. [...]
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Last year Stryker Corp came under fire for illegal payments to U.S. doctors. This year, that might be topped. The company announced in an SEC filing last month that it is being investigated by the Department of Justice for “possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” While not many specific details [...]
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In 2007, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received the highest amount of discrimination complaints in five years, the agency reported yesterday. The EEOC noted it received approximately 7,000 more complaints in 2007 than 2006, about a nine percent increase. According to a report by Business Insurance, that’s the highest percentage increase [...]
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Becoming a whistle-blower is now a financially sound career move, thanks to the UK’s Office of Fair Trade (OFT). The British watch dog announced last Friday that it will offer as much as £100,000 for information leading to the discovery and dismantling of illegal corporate cartels. The OFT will offer the rewards for [...]
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Alcoa was sued yesterday by Aluminum Bahrain BSC in a U.S. federal court for allegations of overcharging, fraud and bribery. Aluminum Bahrain BSC, better known as Alba, says it was overcharged by Alcoa for alumina (pictured), a key ingredient in creating aluminum. The company says it paid excesses of about $65 million per [...]
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