Transformations through the Four Phases of Whistleblowing (Part 1)

Transformations through the Four Phases of Whistleblowing (Part 1)

The individual is transformed in four phases by the events that lead up to her whistleblowing and that follow that defining moment. 

1. Divorce

In the first phase, the individual comes to understand that her goals and the organization’s are not aligned.  If she once felt loyalty to her company, that feeling dissolves.  She may now be prepared to harm the company, or her readiness may come in the second phase.

Daniel Ellsberg described a long lead-up to his release of the Pentagon Papers.   Revelatory conversations with generals in Vietnam during 1967 began his transformation.  He moved closer to his split when attending anti-war rallies in 1969, and he finally released the Papers to the New York Times in 1971.  Edward Snowden recounted a years-long approach to his 2012 decision to release secret documents describing government surveillance to a reporter at The Guardian.  Both Ellsberg and Snowden moved gradually from supporters of the government’s strategies to severe critics who were prepared to act as whistleblowers.

I was no whistleblower in 1992 when I signed a loan agreement that violated a key MAI Systems bank agreement.  Instead, I believed that the agreement was critical to MAI’s survival and my own success.  I was no whistleblower in 2005 when I hoped to delay exposure of fraudulent meal counts at the Gilroy nutrition site of Catholic Charities.  Instead, I wanted time to sweep away the problem before it harmed me and the company.  I was no whistleblower in 2006 when I signed a borrowing agreement that I knew HomeFirst would soon violate or when an attorney advised that HomeFirst was at risk of violating licensing requirements at its largest shelter.  Instead, I saw my own future bound up with a successful turnaround of the company which needed my complicity.

I was not prepared to blow a whistle at HomeFirst until after Jenny Niklaus joined the company as CEO in 2009, after the company’s program director cried at the news of Niklaus' selection, after its development director quit in frustration and Niklaus fired in succession the two replacements she had hired, after the company reported four successive years of losses, and after Niklaus insisted on wildly optimistic assumptions in order to balance the company’s 2013-14 budget.

The events that transform anyone from a reasonably loyal, if not especially respectful, employee to a whistleblower are not always pretty.  Others may find them inconsequential; the events do not always plainly justify becoming a whistleblower.  The events that preceded Chelsea Manning’s disclosure of documents that revealed misconduct in the Iraq war are painful to read, but they do not logically support an ethical decision to reveal classified materials.  After her unique personal journey, each whistleblower arrives at the point where she is prepared, in a way she was not previously, to violate loyalties and to initiate a doomed project that will result in her punishment.

2. Witness

In the second phase, the potential whistleblower witnesses a questionable activity.  No longer fully aligned with the company, she does not assume that the activity will benefit her and the company.  She suspects that something is amiss.  After investigating, she decides that the activity is wrong or a mistake and mentions it to her boss or another responsible person.  Depending on her approach and the value of the activity to the company, her observation may be ignored or dismissed or she may catch some blow-back.

When the company does not deal with the problem promptly, she begins to doubt those in charge, and she watches closely what happens next[1].  As she investigates further, she finds not only that the initial problem remains uncorrected but that other problems exist as well[2].

Organizations that misbehave in multiple instances are sometimes portrayed as “bad barrels” that turn previously good people into bad apples who commit wrongs[3].  Cynics judge that the nature of organizations is to misbehave in furtherance of their objectives[4].  From the whistleblower’s perspective, the question is not why the misbehavior occurs but whether it will be disclosed.

I first suspected the County overbilling at the end of preparing the 2013-14 budget.  As we had done privately and in earlier meetings with the Finance Committee, Niklaus and I exchanged barbs in front of the Board over that budget, which I considered perilously unrealistic.  In a different mood I would have ignored the possibility that we had billed the County of Santa Clara improperly.  I had done so in the past, and the County would not find the problem on its own.  This time, however, I probed further.

Niklaus, who was unhappy that I found the violation just prior to our annual audit, said she and the Program Officer would work it out with the County staff.  In a different mood I might have dropped the matter after she had relieved me of the responsibility to fix it, but this time I tracked their progress.  No resolution emerged, and I became more annoyed.

On August 26, 2013, Niklaus, the Program Officer. the Development Officer, and I met as we did on most Mondays.  As the meeting closed following a discussion of the County overbilling, I asked whether HomeFirst’s largest shelter violated the State of California licensing requirement.  There was no external pressure to evaluate this issue, which would not be discovered by the State or anyone else on their own.  We had all ignored the risk for years.  Niklaus went crazy, which I found interesting.

My exchanges with Niklaus over the budget had widened my separation from her and the Board.  I was prepared to view potential misdeeds differently than I had in the past, to investigate them, and to look for other misdeeds that might confirm my assessment of the organization.

Psychologically separated from the company and with a suspected misdeed in hand, I was prepared to become a whistleblower.

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[1] For example, Carol Bondy Theresa Ely, Angelo Jacques, Deborah Muller, Helen Pace, Mark Stewart, Joni Westawski, SandRidge Whistleblower
2] For example, Linda Hobson, Rebecca Ricciuti, Amy Ward

[3] Kish-Gephart, Jennifer J., David A. Harrison, and Linda Klebe Trevino. “Bad Apples, Bad Cases, and Bad Barrels: Meta-Analytic Evidence about Sources of Unethical Decisions at Work.” Journal of Applied Psychology. 95.1 (2010): 1-31

[4] Alford, C. Fred. Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 2001

Whistleblower’s Standing v. Omnicare (Part 2)

Whistleblower’s Standing v. Omnicare (Part 2)

Third among the whistleblower issues raised by the Marc Silver v. Omnicare et al case: Was Silver justified in making his complaint?  Did he have the legal standing to complain? 

Silver witnessed wrongdoing spread across the pharmacy/nursing home industry, and the culprits stole money from U.S. taxpayers.  Certainly, expressing his concern was a socially valuable project.

Every whistleblower discloses what he or she believes is an affront to social or legal mores and something the accused refuses to correct.  Each of my complaints against HomeFirst alleged a continuing company misdeed that involved harming homeless individuals or using taxpayer money inappropriately.  Like Silver, we all can find social justification.

Problematic for Silver’s lawsuit against Omnicare et al were two facts: his suit was very similar to David Gale’s earlier suit, and he might not have presented sufficient direct, inside knowledge of the misdeeds, particularly those committed by Pharmerica.  As a consequence, Omnicare’s settlement agreement provided nothing for Silver although he may eventually receive portions of settlements under the 27 related state suits. 

Silver’s suit against Pharmerica, which was carved out of the Omnicare settlement agreement, was dismissed in 2016 based on the court’s conclusion that he lacked standing under the U.S. False Claims Act.  The court decided that although Pharmerica probably engaged in the alleged illegal activities Silver had no commercial relationship with the company and he had relied on publicly available information in filing his suit. 

As a whistleblower, Silver achieved the ethical objectives of outing the wrongdoers and causing Omnicare to pay a penalty that may encourage it to act better in the future. But, as is true for many other whistleblowers, the issue of legal standing limited his effectiveness.

When I complained about HomeFirst’s not repaying an advance given to it by the City of San Jose, my compliant got little traction.  In part, the City’s indifference arose from its close business alignment with HomeFirst, but also I had no legal standing: I was not a San Jose resident, and I was not harmed by HomeFirst’s inaction.  HomeFirst’s failure to repay the $140,000 it overcharged the County of Santa Clara did not harm me either, even though I was a County resident, because funding for the grant came from state taxes paid by those who earn more than $1 million in a year.  Since I was never a homeless person served by HomeFirst, I was not harmed by the alleged minimum wage, payroll tax, and food handler card violations either. 

I was just a good guy, with no strong legal basis for a lawsuit that might force HomeFirst to act properly or to suffer a penalty.  Many whistleblowers are good guys with little real basis to sue their employers (other than for the retaliation they suffered), and our small-time complaints involve too little money to qualify for suit under false claims acts.  As a result, unless we can interest media in the cases – a risky tactic that exposes us to expensive suits from the companies – we have little power to effect the changes we envision when we begin our projects.

Fourth, the scope of wrongdoing involved in Silver’s case is remarkable.  Ruscher, Gale, and Litwiller were the tip of Omnicare’s iceberg of insider-witnesses that included their colleagues, supervisors, managers, sales and legal staff, and executives who were aware of the company’s tactics.  Many other companies in the institutional pharmacy industry participated in the scheme and employed hundreds to make it work for them.  Then there were all the nursing homes[1] that knew they were getting a deal too good to be legal.

Silver’s case was not unique in the way knowledge of the misbehavior was wide-spread.  Hundreds, and maybe thousands, were aware of Wells Fargo’s bank account fraud.  Thousands were aware of the mortgage frauds allegedly committed by Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and others during the great recession.  Dozens inside and outside HomeFirst were aware of the misdeeds I alleged. 

In each case of an alleged wrongdoing, many witness but fewer disclose the wrong, and seldom is the accused penalized.

Finally, did Silver’s whistleblowing do any good?  Along with Gale, Silver caused Omnicare to agree to pay $120 million to the U.S. government.  That sounds like a lot, but during the 10 years to 2014 Omnicare paid an average of $80 million every year in settlement and litigation costs, making the 2014 penalty barely a wrist slap – it was more a normal cost of doing business – for the company which refused to admit doing any wrong.  And Pharmerica, whose litigation costs also run more than 1% of revenues a year, was not penalized at all despite evidence that it had participated in the illegal kickback schemes.

It is an article of faith that whistleblowing meets a social need by helping to correct wrongs in a complex society[2].  Stories about whistleblowers, however, focus most often on the retaliations they suffer and the complaints they file against their attackers for those retaliations.  Too little attention is paid to whether the world is made better by our disclosures and the wrongdoers are punished for the acts that we disclose.  HomeFirst has not been penalized for any of the violations that I alleged; it has not been seriously investigated concerning the allegations; it has not repaid the money it admitted misusing.

If corporations too often go unpunished for the wrongs we disclose and we are not effectively protected from their retaliations, why should we bother to become whistleblowers? 

With little effort, we can construct ethical justifications[3] for blowing the whistle, but that comes well after the fact. 

In my case, identifying issues came naturally as a part of my job as HomeFirst’s CFO.  Avoiding misbehavior was not just a professional responsibility, after fifteen years as CFO of different companies it seemed to me a potential legal responsibility.  The failure of the company’s CEO and its Board to act on my complaints echoed their failure to respond to the company’s faltering financial position.  They drove me crazy.

When whistleblowers act, we respond to ethical and professional concerns but also to personal issues, sometimes including greed or a desire for revenge.  That fact – even combined with the high probability that we will achieve little – does not diminish our whistleblowing.  If anything, it makes our projects more important, I think.  Our jumble of motivations does not mean that we should not act, but when we act we should do so intelligently and warily. 

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[1] Disclosure: my wife’s ex-husband was executive director of a nursing home involved in Silver’s suit.

[2] Miethe, Terance D.  Whistleblowing at Work.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press.  1999

[3] For example, in Hosmer, Larue Tone. “Trust: Connecting Link between Organizational Theory and Philosophical Ethics.” The Academy of Management Review  20.2 (April 1995): 379-403

Whistleblower's Standing & Silver v. Omnicare (Part 1)

Whistleblower's Standing & Silver v. Omnicare (Part 1)

In 1998, Medicare began paying nursing homes a fixed amount for their Medicare Part A patients, rather than reimbursing the homes for their prescription costs[1].  The change created a new financial risk for the nursing homes – the possibility that a Medicare Part A patient’s actual costs exceed what Medicare agreed to pay. 

Institutional pharmacies, like Omnicare, offered a solution: a package deal that provided, via kickbacks, below market pricing for Part A patients and above market prices for patients covered by Medicaid, Medicare Part D (beginning in 2006), and private insurance, whose prescription costs were paid as billed.  Because Part A patients were a small minority of all patients, this arrangement benefited the institutional pharmacies as well as the nursing homes, but Medicare and Medicaid lost out.  It was against the law, of course.

Marc Silver saw all this because he owned and operated a nursing home from 1986 through 2007 and an institutional pharmacy from 2001 through 2007.  He received proposals for this sort of kickback scheme from several institutional pharmacies, including Omnicare.  After accepting one of them, Silver’s nursing home saw its costs decrease by nearly 40% in 1999, and its profits increased.  Silver spoke with scores of nursing home owners in the years up to 2011 and found that they had enjoyed similar experiences. 

In 2010[2], David Gale filed a lawsuit, which the federal government joined, against Omnicare for its participation in these kickback schemes, based on evidence he had obtained as an employee of the company until he resigned in 2010.  In 2011, Silver filed his suit against Omnicare, Pharmerica, and three companies that they had acquired.  Silver’s suit was eventually joined by the federal government and 27 state governments under their various false claims acts.

The Gale and Silver cases proceeded[3] through the courts, based on slightly different, but mutually supporting, evidence.  In 2014, Omnicare settled the suits by agreeing to pay the federal government $124 million, of which Gale received $17 million.  Silver received nothing from Omnicare in the settlement although he could share in future state-level settlement agreements.

The 2014 agreement specifically excluded Pharmerica with whom Silver’s litigation continued.  Finally in 2016, the court agreed with Pharmerica that because Silver had had no commercial relationship with the company (he had relied on evidence provided by another and on public information, the court concluded) he was not entitled to file suit against it under the False Claims Act.

Silver’s case involves a few important questions about the nature of whistleblowing. 

First, who deserves to be called a whistleblower at all?  Silver was never an employee[4] of Omnicare or the other defendants in his suit; he never had to wrestle with the loyalty issues that confound other whistleblowers[5]; and he ducked the retaliations that employee-whistleblowers usually suffer[6].   Still, like any whistleblower, Silver served the public welfare by calling out a wrongdoing that he had witnessed. 

Omnicare dismissed Silver by calling his a parasitic suit that only built on Gale’s suit.  But companies accused of wrongdoing commonly disparage their accusers: their complaints are said to be, among other things, baseless and based in poor information, personal vendettas, and the product of character deficiencies.  For its part, HomeFirst claimed that my complaints were not always substantiated and that my responsibility as CFO was to fix problems, not report them externally.

Individuals well known as whistleblowers have been privy to critical information about wrongdoers who were not their employers.  Among the most famous whistleblowers is Daniel Ellsberg, who was a RAND Corporation analyst when he released the Pentagon Papers that revealed government deceptions about the war in Vietnam.  Edward Snowden was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton when he released secret government documents that described domestic and international surveillance programs.

Restricting the term whistleblower to current or former employees of the wrongdoer is an academic exercise that serves no useful social purpose and needlessly discourages evaluation of the disclosures.  While employee-as-whistleblower discussions can highlight the importance of combatting retaliation against whistleblowers, they divert attention from the more important wrongdoer-as-criminal conversation.

Second, were Silver’s motivations sufficiently pure?  When Sissela Bok wrote that whistleblowers should have a moral basis for their complaints, financial rewards for disclosures were rare.  Over the past 36 years, federal and state false claims acts have come to provide compensation for successful whistleblowers, as does the IRS among several federal agencies.  While support for whistleblower rewards is not universal, they have demonstrably increased the number of people (and their attorneys) willing to step forward despite probable retaliations, and in 2014 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged the need for financial rewards to properly compensate whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers’ motivations have always been a mix of ethical and base.  Those who make disclosures are often described as disgruntled and uncooperative, as well they might be around wrongdoers who ostracize and retaliate against them.  After I disclosed suspected misdeeds, HomeFirst was quick to accuse me of impeding the company’s doing business when I wasn’t sabotaging it.

Expecting that whistleblowers should be pure-hearted is delusional at best.  At worst, it subjugates potential whistleblowers to entrenched political and economic powers who are happy to infringe on others’ rights when it suits them.  If Silver’s motivation was, at least in part, financial there is no wrong in that, if only because Omnicare’s misbehavior was financially motivated.

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[1] Information drawn from US et al ex rel. Marc Silver v. Omnicare et al Case 1:11-cv-01326-NLH-JS Document 65 Filed 09/19/13, Third Amended Complaint.  http://freepdfhosting.com/90b8ac4627.pdf

[2] Susan Ruscher, a former Omnicare employee, filed a similar suit in 2008, but courts decided that she failed to produce compelling evidence.  Ruscher’s most recent appeal was denied in 2016.  Alan Litwiller, another former Omnicare employee, also filed a suit over the kick-back scheme in 2011; it was dismissed in 2014.

[3] A hint as to how that process worked: Omnicare inundated Gale’s attorneys with almost half a million pages of evidence in response to their document request.

[4] Near, Janet P., Michael T. Rehg, James R. Van Scotter and Marcia P. Miceli.  “Does Type of Wrongdoing Affect the Whistle-Blowing Process?” Business Ethics Quarterly 14.2 (April 2004): 219-242

[5] Bok, Sissela.  “Whistleblowing and Professional Responsibilities.” In Ethics Teaching in Higher Education. Daniel Callahan and Sissela Bok (eds.).  New York and London: Plenum Press. 1980. 277-295

[6] Alford, C. Fred. Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 2001; and Navex Global.  “2016 Ethics & Compliance Benchmark.” 

A Whistleblower’s Take on the Oakland “Ghost Ship” Fire

A Whistleblower’s Take on the Oakland “Ghost Ship” Fire

On the night of Friday December 2, 2016, an Oakland, California warehouse and artist collective, known as the Ghost Ship, was engulfed in flames, killing 36 persons.  As City officials and others continue to investigate the incident, a story has emerged:

-          The Ghost Ship building had a history of health and safety complaints although it had not been inspected in three decades

-          The building, which was owned by Chor Nar SiuNg, was leased to Derick Ion Almena and Micah Allison who subleased spaces to individuals.  Almena and Allison lived in the building with their three children.

-          Ng has a history of violations in other buildings that she owns

-          Almena resisted calls to improve the safety of the building

-          Illegal housing conversions, such as those at the Ghost Ship warehouse, occur throughout the City of Oakland, where nearly 6,000 habitability complaints and investigations occurred over the past three years and many warehouses have been used for housing and artist spaces.

-          Oakland’s financial difficulties, which have contributed to its long history of high crime, have forced all city services, including building inspections, to compete for resources with an understaffed police force.

-          Oakland’s higher crime rate helps keep apartment rental rates affordable for lower income tenants, such as artists, who welcome cheap, if unsafe, housing in places like the Ghost Ship

-          While the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $2,366 in Oakland and $3,336 in San Francisco, Ghost Ship residential spaces rented for about $700 a month although sometimes without heat or electricity

-          Ghost Ship, where artists concentrated on electronic music, operated like many other Oakland warehouses cum artist communities by providing a space that encouraged artistic creativity and growth

-          The substandard housing provided in artist-warehouses is consistent with a special Oakland culture that deserves sympathy and even protection. 

-          To sustain that culture, public and private money is needed to help arts groups stay in Oakland.

This story arcs from the societal tragedy of high housing prices spurred by income inequality to the human tragedy in the deaths of creative young people, and it sprinkles guilt – legal or not – among those youth, the building owner and manager, and civic leaders.  Then in glides to a vision of a civic and artistic communities comingtogether.

The story, though, need never have been told if more people had become whistleblowers who spoke out forcefully. 

-          More residents should have complained to the Oakland’s Planning and Building Department, which, however feckless, was responsible for code enforcement

-          Performing groups should have complained to police and fire safety officers

-          Department employees should have become small-time whistleblowers by complaining to authorities when officials failed to act on complaints and inspections

-          Department managers should have complained to authorities and media when budget constraints created potential safety risks

-          Entertainment journalists who reported on events at the site should have alerted their companies and the police about unsafe conditions

-          Local residents and local businesses and their employees should have complained more to police, fire safety officers, and media

-          Police and fire safety officers who traveled the main thoroughfare just half a block away should have investigated the property on seeing residents and partygoers entering and leaving the building and on receiving complaints from those in the neighborhood

-          Police and fire staff should have blown the whistle on the failure of officers and management to take action against the property and its owner

Early on the morning of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year old woman, was brutally murdered in New York City by 29-year old Winston Moseley.  For years afterward, the narrative ran that 38 people in her neighborhood had witnessed Moseley stabbing her repeatedly and had heard her cries for more than half an hour, but no one had called the police under after she was dead.  The incident led to research into the “bystander effect,” which proposed that we are less likely to offer assistance the more other bystanders are present.

Researchers eventually determined that the narrative was wrong: only a handful of people witnessed Moseley’s initial attack, one called out immediately and scared him away, and two others called the police; only one person witnessed a second attack that ended Genovese’s life.  Although the Genovese facts were wrong, social research has provided support for the bystander effect.

Dozens, or even hundreds, were aware of the Ghost Ship problem and failed to act.  One theory shifts blame from individuals to society – valiant if dreamy artists stand against the base economic forces behind high housing costs.  If code requirements were strictly enforced, Ghost Ship and similar buildings could be shut down, the Oakland art community would be decimated, and Oakland itself would lose its vibrant character.  Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has assured residents there will be no witch hunts following the Ghost Ship fire even as other cities crack down on illegal sites like Ghost Ship.

Like Ghost Ship and many other whistleblowing cases, at HomeFirst many people – employees and Board directors – were aware of the problems that I disclosed.  HomeFirst’s managers, like Ghost Ship’s apologists, claimed that its alleged violations should not be seen as black-and-white questions but that the broad societal impact of ceasing the violations should be considered.  As was true with Ghost Ship, HomeFirst’s government investigators often were feckless and had little time for the reported problems.

The silent witnesses to wrongdoing may be hundreds, dozens, or, in the case of Kitty Genovese, one frightened man behind his apartment door.  Political and economic forces can shift the legally drawn line between right and wrong, and whistleblowers face battles that are less about ethics than about values and power. 

The Lawsuit & Williams v. Wyndham

The Lawsuit & Williams v. Wyndham

On November 17, 2016, Patricia Williams was awarded $20 million by a jury that heard her case against Wyndham Vacation Ownership, which had fired her six years earlier following her disclosures of allegedly fraudulent sales practices at Wyndham’s San Francisco office.  She didn’t get there with my ace attorney who negotiated a $45,000 deal with HomeFirst after I was fired.

Like many other whistleblowers, Williams identified a number of bad actions by her employer Wyndham.  In her lawsuit she listed various illegal and fraudulent sales techniques used by Wyndham sales people plus acts of credit card fraud.  Williams alleged that Wyndham’s tactics specially targeted seniors, and her allegations were echoed in a 2013 class action suit against Wyndham.

In identifying and disclosing these suspicious activities, Williams was no naïf. She had worked for fifteen years in the timeshare industry, where complaints of fraudulent activities were common.  In addition, she had worked in a Wyndham sales office in Virginia for three years before transferring to the San Francisco office in 2010.

Neither was Williams alone in her awareness of potential problems in the San Francisco office.  Before she was fired, Williams met with some other local sales staff, who also refused to engage in illegal activities, about trying to stop the fraudulent conduct.  Her suit identified co-workers who participated in the practices.  She reported her suspicions internally to the company’s compliance hotline, the HR department, and numerous managers, including one vice president.

After she was fired, two years passed before she filed her lawsuit.  If my own case against HomeFirst can be taken as a guide, during that period her attorneys attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate an acceptable settlement with Wyndham.  By the time of her suit, Williams had four co-plaintiffs, so the negotiations may have been complicated and the potential cost to Wyndham could have been high.

Wyndham’s arguments in its defense are familiar to other whistleblowers, and they give insight into how those negotiations might have proceeded.  They gave no ground: she had not proven her case, they claimed.  Wyndham’s actions were entirely justified by valid business reasons.  The company had made good faith efforts to avoid misdeeds and never intended to act illegally.  Williams had unclean hands and based her complaint about her termination on after-acquired evidence – a defense that my former attorney feared HomeFirst would use.

It is easy to imagine that Wyndham would have been no less difficult to negotiate with than HomeFirst was with me.  It was well-practiced in pushing back on complaints about its business conduct, as was HomeFirst’s attorney.  Williams could have settled, as her co-plaintiffs eventually chose to do, but she pressed on for a jury trial.  Along the challenging four-year path to her $20 million award, she plowed through four attorneys.

Williams won financially in a way that most whistleblowers can only dream of even if Wyndham seems likely to appeal the award.  But she certainly suffered first from her whistleblowing.  Unable to find another sales job, she was forced to take much lower paying jobs; she had troubles with alcohol; and she returned to Virginia.

For its part, Wyndham makes few apologies.  It claims to have fine-tuned its compliance operations and to have modified its sales practices.  The actions that Williams alleged occurred six years ago do not represent the company and its values today, it believes.  But it does not admit guilt now any more than it has in the past.

Wyndham’s statements and tactics since it fired Williams make clear that she could not have achieved her outcome through negotiations alone.  It took a lawsuit to get the job done, but the long course of that lawsuit shows why my former attorney was so quick to settle for a piddling amount accompanied by such onerous restrictions.  My attorney was probably correct in saying that any company with a capable defender would never voluntarily agree to a fair compensation for the whistleblower.

We see this one remarkable outcome because it is large and it struck at such a conspicuous target.  The egregious nature of Wyndham’s acts may have contributed to the success of Williams’ suit, but other companies that are called out by unsuccessful whistleblowers are also guilty of egregious behavior.  Williams’ suit pointed to appealing victims in vulnerable seniors, but most companies mistreat vulnerable people.  I alleged that HomeFirst’s actions wronged homeless disabled people, but my complaint has so far yielded no great victory for me.

The many lawsuits that produce little or nothing for their plaintiffs remain in the dark.  The thousands of negotiated settlements that fail miserably to compensate whistleblowers for their losses, even after years of effort, are secret from all.  Save for a lucky few, whistleblowers must content themselves with small reward and less fame.