Whistleblower News From The Inside -- March 5, 2018
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
Former Partner Blames BigLaw Stress for Plot to Sell Sealed Lawsuits to Targeted Companies – A former BigLaw partner says he was suffering from anxiety and depression when he was arrested in a plot to sell sealed whistleblower lawsuits he obtained while working at the U.S. Justice Department. The sentencing memorandum filed on behalf of Jeffrey Wertkin says he had hoped that selling the sealed complaints could help him provide his family a new house in a better neighborhood and allow him to leave his law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Wertkin was arrested in a hotel lobby in January 2017 while wearing a wig and sunglasses as he tried to sell a sealed lawsuit to a targeted California company for $310,000. He went to the meeting even though he had received a call from someone at the Justice Department investigating who might have tried to sell another sealed suit to a company in Alabama for $50,000. (The culprit was Wertkin.) Wertkin pleaded guilty in November 2017 to obstruction of justice and transportation of stolen property across state lines. ABA Journal
Netflix’s Doping Documentary ‘Icarus’ Wins Best Documentary – Bryan Fogel’s sports doping documentary “Icarus,” which exposed the state sponsored doping program of Russia’s Olympic athletes won best documentary at the Academy Awards Sunday. It beat out both Agnes Varda’s feel-good “Faces Places,” which took the Film Independent Spirt Award Saturday, and the harrowing White Helmets documentary “Last Men in Aleppo.” Fogel dedicated the award to Grigory Rodchenkov, “our fearless whistleblower who now lives in grave danger,” he said. Rodchenkov is the former director of Russia’s Anti-Doping Center, who became an unlikely whistleblower against the decades-long corruption exposed in the film. “We hope ‘Icarus’ is a wake-up call, yes about Russia but more than that about the importance of telling the truth,” Fogel said. US News
Abbott Loses Bid to Toss Part of Whistleblower Retaliation Case – A federal judge has rejected Abbott Laboratories Inc’s bid to narrow a lawsuit by a former employee who said the drugmaker fired her for complaining about what she said were illegal promotional practices at the company. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston on Thursday rejected Abbott’s bid to dismiss Ebonia Elliott-Lewis’ claim under Massachusetts state law that the drugmaker wrongfully discharged her in violation of public policy. Reuters