Team of Rivals? Not Quite. In response to a series of 2007 FTC antitrust suits, Whole Foods has asked 96 of its U.S.-based competitors to hand over sensitive company data. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, believes the information will help fight the 29 separate lawsuits it is facing – one for

Bad news came to McKesson Corp. yesterday in the form of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris. Judge Saris certified a number of 2005 suits by the New England Carpenters Health Benefits Fund as class action, and allowed them to

A Thai Member of Parliament (MP) and a newspaper critic face millions of dollars in damages and significant prison time after being sued for libel by Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, according to a story by the Guardian Newspaper. Both were sued for saying that Tesco, known as Tesco Lotus in Thailand, is expanding too [...]

Thanks to a settlement announced last Thursday, 3M Company will have to change the labels of their tape products and pony up nearly $700,000 for allegedly misrepresenting the physical dimensions of their tape by six percent. 3M was accused of mislabeling its products by Fresno, California’s Division of Measure Standards, which brought suit against

Seven years ago H. Dean Steinke, a rising employee and former district sales manager for Merck, put his career on hold by blowing the whistle on his former employee’s unethical marketing practices. Today, his conscience finally paid off when Merck agreed to pay $671 million to settle accusations of overcharging government programs such as Medicare, [...]

Remember all those Mattel toy recalls last year? Apparently it didn’t cripple the company as much as some experts predicted. The Motley Fool posted an interesting article yesterday on the tenuous recovery of the company. Mattel’s fourth-quarter earnings are up 15% over last year, and the stock price – still drastically

Two former sales representatives for Amgen have brought suit against the company, alleging it used questionable and illegal sales tactics to help push sales of its psoriasis-treating drug, Enbrel. The suit alleges that Amgen pressured its sales team to 1) obtain physician’s records for patients suffering from psoriasis and 2) encourage insurance companies to reimburse [...]

A new study discovered that U.S. and U.K. consumers want businesses to be more environmentally friendly, but have a hard time naming specific companies focusing on the issue. However, the study discovered a number of “big brands” in each country that are recognized for climate-change awareness more than others. In the U.K., those leaders include [...]

What happened to the good old days, when employees just raided the supply closet? Fidelity National reported that the personal data of as many as 8.5 million customers was taken by a senior database administrator at the company. The company suggested that this number, up from initial reports from Fidelity of 2.3 million, may be [...]

The French competition regulator, Conseil de la Concurrence, has fined the country’s three mobile telephone companies (Orange France, FranC’aise du Radiot, and Bouygues Telecom SA) a total of $631 million for illegally restricting competition. Investigators found that between 1997 and 2003, the operators regularly exchanged information about new and canceled contracts and used this information [...]

A lawsuit against Fidelity Investments accuses the mutual fund giant of deliberately avoiding and violating portions of the U.S. Patriot Act. The whistle was blown on the company by, of all people, one of its former compliance officers. What has resulted is a mess of finger-pointing, additional lawsuits, and rush to put a seal on [...]

It hasn’t been the best year thus far for Best Buy – it’s been one plagued by controversy surrounding questionable marketing practices, document retention regarding litigation and allegations of invasion of privacy. Perhaps the most widely-known incident is the lawsuit filed two weeks ago by the Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, alleging that Best Buy [...]

What compels a person to commit a fraud worth $800 million? Mark Kaiser, former Chief Marketing Director for U.S. Foodservice, insisted to a federal judge that in his own case, it wasn’t “fueled or driven by greed.” U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa disagreed – he sentenced Kaiser to seven years in prison for actions [...]

Meet Ronnie Segev. He’s a pianist. He also has called Priceline.com 215 times asking for a refund on a plane ticket. Allegedly the General Counsel of Priceline sent the cops after him and he went to jail for 40 hours. He wants everyone to forget about the incident. Thanks to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, that’s [...]

The FDA and Colgate-Palmolive issued warnings this week about counterfeit Colgate toothpaste which may contain a poisonous substance. Thus far, the toothpaste has been discovered in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Apparently, this product does not contain fluoride. Instead, it contains Diethylene Glycol (DEG). DEG is often described by its more layman’s term: [...]

The Kellogg Company announced today that they will rule out advertising its products to children under age 12 unless the foods meet specific nutrition guidelines for calories, sugar, fat and sodium. Additionally, Kellogg intends to stop using licensed characters or branded toys to promote foods unless the products meet the same nutrition guidelines. The plan [...]

Last week, Ernst & Young released an interested survey on whistleblowing, corporate culture and the fear of reprisal across the European Union. The survey, Fraud Risk Mitigation in Europe, interviewed 1300 employees of multinational companies in eight Western European and five Central and Eastern European countries (100 respondents in each country), and invited their views [...]

Ever have a day (or a year) when nothing seems to go right? Dell has had a fantastically bad run over the past 18 months. Exploding batteries. Accounting problems. Management turnover. And then being sued by the State of New York over marketing and business practices. It’s never fun to have a state AG using [...]

Today’s NY Times has a lengthy piece entitled “Blinking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist”. It is really rather a depressing piece about how information brokers, such as InfoUSA sells telemarketing lists to criminal organizations that in turn prey upon elderly to defraud them. The story features a 92-year old man whose life savings were [...]

One day this past week (Wednesday to be specific), an inaccurate blog posting about a delay in an impending product launch for Apple wiped $4 billion off its market value (3%). As PC World reported, the popular technology blog, Engadget, posted a story claiming the expected June launch of the iPhone would be delayed until [...]

The estimates for the total damage to TJX as a result of the massive data breach suffered by the company are beginning to roll in – with the higher ends of the range being between $4.5 and $8.6 billion. For a company with a market capitalization a little shy of $13 billion, this is an [...]

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced a lawsuit against CVS after customer records with personal information such as driver license and credit card numbers were found in the trash behind one of the drugstore chain’s Texas stores. According to Reuters… Investigators with the office of the attorney general found the documents in a dumpster behind [...]

It is now a legal action. Last summer, the British TV operator ITN did a documentary on murder of inmate Zahid Mubarek at the Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution. During the videotaping, the camerawoman included a few seconds of footage of one of the jailer’s keys. In fears that the images in the video could be [...]

A state district court jury in Dallas has returned a $64 million verdict against Sun Country Travel LLC for deceptive sale and advertising practices. The jury also found that the company violated state and federal “Do-Not-Call” laws. The state alleged the company’s telemarketing pitches “offered completely free vacation packages to lure consumers to a 90-minute [...]

A U.K. biscuit firm has been fined because its Giant Chocolate Fingers were being sold in tins that were too big. The firm is one of the first to be prosecuted under laws designed to clamp down on the use of too much packaging. It admitted breaching regulations and applying a false trade description and [...]