A former employee of a Louisiana-based nursing provider has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of firing her for leveling allegations of fraudulent billing.  Sally Christine Summers claims that she was fired from LHC Group Inc. after she complained that the company unnecessarily billed Medicare. The company maintains that Summers was fired for cause.

NetApp Inc. will pay $128 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit accusing the California-based company of misleading the General Services Administration about discount pricing for data-storage services, according to the Washington Post. The settlement is believed to be the largest ever involving the GSA. Under the settlement, whistleblower Igor Kapuscinski will receive about $19 million.

A whistleblower will receive $48.7 million as part of a $325 million settlement between Northrop Grumman Corp. and the federal government, the Los Angeles Times reports. In the lawsuit, an electrical engineer claimed that Northrop unit TRW knowingly sold the government defective parts for a spy satellite program during the 1990s. The settlement is believed to be the largest in history involving a Pentagon whistleblower, an attorney for the whistleblower said.

A spokesman for drug-maker Amgen denied the allegations in a whistle-blower lawsuit unsealed recently and vowed to fight the charges. The suit accuses the company of engaging in illegal marketing practices for its drugs Enbrel and Aranesp. The suit was revealed in a securities filing by Wyeth, which is a co-defendant in the case.

Two whistleblower lawsuits got backing from the federal government Thursday over claims that a Johnson & Johnson unit, Scios Inc., engaged in off-label marketing for one of its heart drugs. According to a statement issued by the Department of Justice, Scios aggressively marketed the heart failure drug Natrecor to patients with less severe conditions beginning soon after the drug was approved in 2001. The cases are U.S. ex rel Strom et al v. Scios Inc. and Johnson & Johnson and U.S. ex rel Smith v. Scios and Johnson & Johnson.

The former chief executive of a Texas-based electricity provider has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of firing him for complaining about overcharging customers. According to the lawsuit, Amigo Energy of Houston and its parent company Fulcrum Power illegally raised rates for some customers and ultimately fired the CEO for his comments about the company’s billing practices. The Texas Public Utility Commission is currently investigating the company over allegations of overcharging.

A whistleblower told lawmakers Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission largely ignored nine years of warnings that Bernard Madoff was engaged in fraudulent activities. In prepared congressional testimony, Harry Markopolis said SEC investigators repeatedly shrugged off clear signs of the fraud due to what he called investigative ineptitude. Lawmakers are currently considering whether to strengthen the agency’s investigative powers or turn those responsibilities over to another agency.

A Texas jury has ordered a state agency to pay $900,000 for retaliating against and firing a worker after she complained about discrimination against minorities. According to an attorney for the plaintiff, officials with the Texas Commission on Human Rights regularly hired white employees for civil rights positions over better qualified minority candidates. The plaintiff was subsequently accused of misconduct and fired, another attorney said. Attorneys for the Texas Commission on Human Rights declined to comment on the case.

It appears that drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. is close to agreeing to a $1.4 billion settlement related to a government investigation into the marketing of its top seller Zyprexa, according to a New York Times report. There were documents discovered that “show Lilly downplayed the drug’s risks and marketed it for unapproved uses” and “lawsuits have made similar claims, accusing Lilly of pushing doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for ‘off-label’ conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.”
The New York Times also reports, “The amount of the settlement is a record sum for so-called corporate whistle-blower cases,” and “among the charges, Lilly has been accused of a scheme stretching for years to persuade doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to two categories of patients — children and the elderly — for whom the drug was not federally approved and in whom its use was especially risky.”

The Connecticut Attorney General’s Office is unable to protect whistleblowers in cases involving state agencies because it is also responsible for defending such cases, a lawsuit filed late last year claims. The case stems from allegations brought by eight state troopers regarding potential corruption within state law enforcement. The troopers claim that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was unable to protect them from retaliation after they agreed to cooperate with the investigation.