Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
This article highlights U.S. Department of Justice guidelines regarding employee conversations on encrypted chat applications such as WhatsApp and offers guidance for companies to mitigate risk.
The Texas Lawbook visited with Hodge to learn more about her vision for leading the firm's ESG Risk and Investigations practice, what it's like to be reunited with her former classmate and how she sees ESG evolving over the next several years.
George Lock Paret, chief pharmacist at one of two Fort Worth compounding pharmacies co-owned by criminal fraud defendant Richard Hall, says he routinely modified the mixtures of ingredients in prescribed medicines to “make us more money.” Paret is one of several former associates of Hall’s testifying against his former boss in what prosecutors say was a $55 million bribery and kickback scheme to defraud federal insurance programs.
Prosecutors claim Richard Hall of Fort Worth recruited “a vast network” of marketers who signed up doctors to prescribe custom drug creams, which were billed to the U.S. government at thousands of dollars per tube.
“Defrauding the government is an affront to American taxpayers,” says Leigha Simonton, U.S. attorney in Dallas. “Defrauding the government during a pandemic — at a time when millions of hardworking entrepreneurs struggled to make payroll and rent — is pouring salt in a wound.”
Allegations of waste and inefficiency surfaced against U.S. companies contracted by the military to provide equipment and services for troops following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lawyers for two former KBR employees working in the Middle East accused the company of over-ordering $340 million worth of supplies for U.S. troops and sued KBR in 2011. A dozen years later, KBR has agreed to settle for nearly $109 million, the largest to date in connection with fraud and waste allegations during the war.
Increasing scrutiny around EJ impacts of infrastructure projects and permitting at the federal and state level could have massive impacts for industry in the form of permit delay and even denial where EJ impacts are identified and not adequately addressed. Companies in Texas should consider EJ impacts more systematically through their project planning processes to be prepared for increased scrutiny, inquiry and potential investigation around the impacts to surrounding communities and the demographic makeup of those communities.
The Biden administration is facing a critical legal test of its authority to enact climate policy, as Republicans plan attacks on new EPA regulations as costly and overstepping the boundaries of the executive branch. Buoyed by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down Obama-era regulations designed to reduce emissions from the power sector, conservative lawyers plan to push the "major questions doctrine." The Houston Chronicle has details.
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