A federal court has handed down a major financial blow to CVS Caremark, ordering the pharmacy benefit manager to pay nearly $290 million in damages and penalties for defrauding the Medicare Part D program. The ruling caps a whistleblower case that began more than a decade ago and underscores the steep consequences companies face for overbilling federal health programs.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against the operators of LA Fitness, accusing the company of making it unnecessarily difficult for consumers to cancel gym memberships and related services that continued indefinitely unless cancelled.
Allied Stone, a Dallas-based supplier of countertops and cabinetry, has agreed to pay $12.4 million alongside its president, Jia “Jerry” Lim, to resolve allegations that they skirted U.S. trade laws by dodging duties on Chinese quartz imports.
Fans who have stared at a frozen Ticketmaster page only to see “sold out” flashing back minutes later know the frustration. Now, the Federal Trade Commission says that frustration wasn’t always bad luck. It was, at least in part, the work of a Maryland-based ticket broker accused of gaming the system on a massive scale.
Qantas Airways has been hit with a record penalty of $58.6 million (AUD 90 million) after illegally sacking nearly 2,000 ground staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision that a Federal Court judge said was more about protecting profits than people.
Google has admitted to engaging in anti-competitive conduct in Australia, following a long-running investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The tech giant acknowledged that, between December 2019 and March 2021, it reached restrictive agreements with Telstra and Optus requiring that Android phones sold by the carriers only pre-install Google Search, shutting out rival providers.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reopened its online Guidance Portal, reviving a Trump-era transparency tool that had been taken offline during the Biden-Harris Administration. Announced on August 13, the relaunched site serves as a centralized hub for guidance documents across the agency’s environmental programs, covering areas such as air quality, water protection, and hazardous waste management.