Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley

STUDENT NAME

LEG500 Law, Ethics & Corp. Governance

Strayer University

Professor Lateefah Muhammad

DATE

It’s becoming more common for employees to become whistleblowers. According to text, a whistleblower is defined as “people who decide to report unethical or illegal activities, usually activities under the control of their employers.” Whistleblowers are responsible for exposing illegal activities or injustice to an executive within an organization. A whistleblower is willing to report a business/companies wrong doing at whatever cost to stop the actions that are being done. Many whistleblowers are protected by several acts that provide financial compensation as well as job protection. The False Claims Act, rewards whistleblowers who file qui tam lawsuits in order for the government to recover funds. Under the Sox Sarbanes Act, it provides job protection to whistleblowers because of their professional and personal risks they take to expose and stop fraud against the government. There are moral and ethical ethics to whistleblowers and most times they have good intentions that may backfire on them.

One of the most recent publicly traded companies involved in a whistleblower case is with JcPenney. This case back in March 2015 and is ongoing. As reported by Whistleblower Law for Managers, A former part-time employee of JC Penney by the name of Robert Blatchford, filed a retaliation claim saying that he was fired after alerting authorities that the retailer was overcharging its customers. Robert Blatchford” filed the claim under Florida’s Private Whistleblower Act. Blatchford worked at the St. Petersburg location from 2007 to 2009 and then again from August 2012 to July 2013. He claims that after he issued complaints about his store charging full price for items that were on sale and collecting sales tax on items that were nontaxable, he was the victim of retaliation by his manager and the company” (Reingold, 2015)....