On September 28, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California issued two separate orders in a long-running SOX whistleblower lawsuit.  Following a jury trial, the court upheld the jury’s $1.5 million damages award and awarded the plaintiff $2.4 million in attorneys’ fees.  Erhart v. BofI

oshaOn August 1, 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) launched a new pilot program, titled “Expedited Case Processing Pilot,” in its Western region.  Here is the DOL’s press release describing the program.  The program enables a complainant filing claims under whistleblower statutes to ask OSHA to cease its investigation and issue findings in an expedited fashion. 

We have seen a number of substantial whistleblower awards make headlines this year, but a recent article on nytimes.com discusses the potential downsides of government-sponsored bounty programs: rewarding whistleblowers by paying them millions of dollars for information may lead to perverse incentives by allowing wrongdoers to win significant sums of money with little government accountability for the awards. 

A Seventh Circuit panel recently affirmed dismissal of a whistleblower claim under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (“ARRA”) where the complaint did not state a claim (for Rule 12(b)(6) purposes) for misuse or mismanagement of ARRA-covered funds.  Fuqua v. SVOX AG, Case No. 12-cv-1870 (7th Cir. May 16, 2014).