News

Outten & Golden LLP, By Tammy Marzigliano, Pawanpreet Dhaliwal, and Brittany Arnold

Daryl Woodruff was an interim superintendent and contender for a leadership position at PG&E. He was fired for fabricated performance issues after he spoke his conscience twice. First, he stood up for himself and his colleagues by complaining of race discrimination to the company’s human resources department. Second, he reported his good faith belief that other PG&E leaders had failed to inspect defective, potentially explosive electrical transformers and lied about it,...

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision this week in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers shrinks Dodd-Frank's protections against workplace retaliation for corporate whistleblowers.

The once robust statute now leaves a gaping hole for those employees in the private sector who report securities related violations to their employer. Now, after the Supreme Court's ruling, employees are required to report directly to the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to avail themselves of legal protection under the statute - internal reporting is no longer enough.

"This decision is bad...

A former Grant & Eisenhofer lawyer has asked a federal judge in Washington D.C. to toss out the firm’s “recklessly false” claims that he unlawfully poached a client in a whistleblower case against Celgene Corp that recently settled for $280 million.

Reuben Guttman said he brought the whistleblower, Beverly Brown, to the firm and that she followed him when he left Grant & Eisenhofer in 2015. Guttman, who is now a name partner at plaintiffs’ firm Guttman Buschner & Brooks, is represented by Outten & Golden.

To read the full story on WestlawNext Practitioner...

Denying allegations that he stole a lucrative whistleblower client on his way out of Grant & Eisenhofer, former director Reuben Guttman on Tuesday accused the plaintiffs firm of rehashing old claims and using a recent breach-of-contract lawsuit to sully his reputation.

Represented by employment law boutique Outten & Golden, Guttman and his current firm, Washington, D.C.-based whistleblower boutique Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, filed several motions in response to a contract lawsuit Grant & Eisenhofer brought in August in D.C. federal court. The lawsuit seeks $7...

A D.C.-based boutique law firm and a former Grant & Eisenhofer PA director urged a federal judge Tuesday to toss G&E’s suit claiming they stole its client and owe $7 million in fees plus a cut of a $280 million settlement reached in a False Claims Act suit against Celgene Corp.

Ex-G&E Director Reuben A. Guttman and his current firm, Guttman Buschner & Brooks PLLC, argued that G&E refused an offer to continue to litigate as co-counsel for whistleblower Beverly Brown in an underlying FCA action against Celgene over the off-label promotion of two cancer drugs. G...

It is pretty much unavoidable. At some point, you will work for the Boss From Hell — unreasonable, abusive, maybe even dishonest.

In many cases, your options are limited, primarily to finding a new job.

But if you honestly believe your boss is committing fraud, you can report it. And federal law gives workers more protection than ever against retaliation by said Boss From Hell or anyone else at the company.

"There is a safety net," said Tammy Marzigliano, co-chair of the Whistleblower and Retaliation Practice Group at...

Outten & Golden LLP partner Tammy Marzigliano is featured in this issue (p. 28).

This is a guest post by Tammy Marzigliano, Laurence S. Moy and Piper Hoffman. Moy and Marzigliano are partners at Outten & Golden LLP, a plaintiff-side employment law firm. Hoffman is a writer and former partner at Outten & Golden. She blogs at piperhoffman.com.

If you get an offer letter when you are getting ready to start a new job, read it carefully. It is a critical document.

Employers do not always consider offer letters to be employment...

Excerpt: “Whistleblowers need to understand what their rights are, what the laws are, and under what instances they can be protected by anti- retaliation provisions,” says Tammy Marzigliano, partner, and co-chair of the whistleblower and retaliation practice at the New York law firm Outten & Golden. Clients often tell her that this or that activity they uncovered was definitely wrong and that they consequently blew the whistle. Much to their surprise, she sometimes has to tell them that what they blew the whistle about (mismanagement,...