Ex-Valeant Executive Guilty of Taking Pharmacy CEO’s Bribe

A former Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. executive was found guilty of accepting a $10 million bribe for manipulating the company’s takeover of a startup mail-order pharmacy in 2014 -- the latest fallout from a scandal that shook the drugmaker.

Gary Tanner, who was a Valeant senior director, engaged in fraud and money laundering by depriving the company of his "honest services" and taking a kickback from an offshore account after the deal closed, a Manhattan federal jury found. Former Philidor Rx Services LLC Chief Executive Officer Andrew Davenport, who paid the kickback, was also convicted on Tuesday after a three-week trial. read more »

Supreme Court Upholds Workplace Arbitration Contracts Barring Class Actions

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that companies can use arbitration clauses in employment contracts to prohibit workers from banding together to take legal action over workplace issues.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s more conservative justices in the majority. The court’s decision could affect some 25 million employment contracts. read more »

Bankers Hate the Volcker Rule. Now, It Could Be Watered Down.

It was one of the most significant actions by the federal government to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis.

The Volcker Rule, named for the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and signed into law, prohibited banks from making their own risky bets with their customers’ deposits. Banks loathed the rule and Republicans vowed to undo it.

This week, Congress is expected to take a significant step toward rolling back parts of the Dodd-Frank law, with the House scheduled to vote Tuesday on a bill that would allow thousands of small and midsize banks to avoid tougher oversight. Similar bipartisan legislation passed the Senate earlier this year, clearing a path for President Trump to sign the bill into law. read more »

Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data

Collective action seeking up to £3.2bn for claims Google bypassed privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser

The collective action is being led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd over claims Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser on iPhones between August 2011 and February 2012 in order to divide people into categories for advertisers.

At the opening of an expected two-day hearing in London on Monday, lawyers for Lloyd’s campaign group Google You Owe Us told the court information collected by Google included race, physical and mental heath, political leanings, sexuality, social class, financial, shopping habits and location data. read more »

Why The $35 billion American Rehab Industry Is Such A Disaster

As the United States is in the throes of an opioid epidemic, its drug and alcohol rehab industry remains an unregulated mess.

On his HBO show Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver exposed the country’s massive failures in treating its addicted population. Most Americans are likely unaware of the issue, unless they’ve had to go or see a friend or family member go to rehab. Despite record numbers of overdose deaths (they now outnumber car accidents as the leading cause of accidental death in the US), the American rehab industry is essentially one giant snake oil scheme, Oliver explained.

Oliver pointed out how many American rehab centers run extremely misleading advertisements, make false promises, and have no actual data to back up their claims that patients are cured of addiction. Most rehab statistics are compiled by the rehab centers themselves by calling former clients and simply asking how they’re doing.

The barrier to starting a rehab center, Oliver explained, is also “dangerously low.” In Idaho, one doesn’t need any kind of license to open a center unless it will treat adolescents. In Florida, which has one of the highest rates of overdose deaths in the US, there’s absolutely nothing in state law to prevent someone from starting an outpatient group home. read more »