Author: WorkCompAcademy

James Wilson, 56, was sentenced by United States District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr.  At the conclusion of a bench trial in March, Judge Hatter found Wilson guilty of two counts of illegally distributing oxycodone.

The evidence presented at trial showed that Wilson, during two different transactions in early 2016, sold a total of four prescriptions to an undercover operative working with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Each of the four prescriptions were for 120 30-milligram oxycodone pills, which is the maximum strength of the opioid sold through pharmacies.

Wilson, who is neither a doctor nor a pharmacist, owned and operated what prosecutors called a “sham medical clinic.” The illegal prescription sales took place in the parking lot of Wilson’s clinic, where he charged $200 for each of the illegal prescriptions.

Wilson was arrested in this case in August 2017, at which time investigators found 160 blank prescriptions in his vehicle.

Wilson’s “scheme involved the diversion of oxycodone, a powerful and deadly opioid at the center of the nation’s opioid crisis,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

This case was investigated by the DEA and was conducted with the support of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF). This matter was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Marina A. Torres and Brittney M. Harris of the International Narcotics, Money Laundering, and Racketeering Section.

The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) is the nation’s largest professional organization of independent nonfiction writers. Its membership consists of freelance writers of magazine articles, trade books, and many other forms of nonfiction writing. The ASJA was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers. Its membership consists of more than 1,100 freelance writers.

The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) is an American professional association made up of still photographers, television videographers, editors, and students in the journalism field. It was founded in 1946. As of 2017, NPPA had total membership at just over 6,000.

Both the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc., and National Press Photographers Association as plaintiffs have just filed a lawsuit federal court against California, over the state’s controversial Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), saying the law forces their independent contractors to “become employees of their clients,” whether or not this is preferable or even feasible.

“We have no choice but to go to court to protect the rights of independent writers and freelance journalists as a whole,” said Milton C. Toby, JD, president of ASJA. “The stakes are too high, and we cannot stand by as our members and our colleagues face ill-conceived and potentially career-ending legislation.”

“Under the law, a freelancer like me can write 200-plus press releases in a year for a marketing firm, and it’s no problem. But if a newspaper wants me to write a weekly column about local politics, it must put me on staff – a very unlikely prospect – or violate the law. Otherwise I am silenced,” said San Diego freelance writer Randy Dotinga, a board member and former president of ASJA.

The lawsuit asserts that the law violates the U.S. Constitution because it penalizes some freelancers while allowing other visual artists (including marketing photographers, fine artists, and graphic artists) to continue to perform as independent contractors, unencumbered by limits on the number of assignments they do.

Additionally, AB5 forbids any freelancing by visual journalists who shoot video, a provision that is challenged in the lawsuit as a content-based restriction on speech. For still photojournalists, the bill imposes a limit of 35 “submissions” or assignments per year for any single client, another content-based First Amendment violation. Similar limits are imposed on freelance writers, editors, and newspaper cartoonists.

And and an article in Forbes just announced that Vox Media, a large digital media company with an array of niche sites, abruptly terminated hundreds of freelance writers in the state of California. The company will cancel its agreements with about 200 contractors to comply with a new law that goes into effect on January 1, 2020.

The cuts target writers for the SB Nation blog, which covers sports in California. Vox intends to replace the freelance writers with roughly 20 new part-time and full-time staffers.

ABC contracted with the landowners to use a gas station/food mart and car wash for two days to film an episode of a television show. The contract gave ABC “the right to use both the real and personal property . . . together with access to and egress from the Property with its personnel and equipment.”

The property sits on the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Terra Bella Street in Sylmar, California and is surrounded by an eight-foot high metal fence. ABC planned to close the property to the public during filming and needed access through three gates to the interior food mart and the parking areas.

On the side of the property along Terra Bella Street was a parking lot, a wall, and a metal rolling gate weighing approximately 900 pounds. The gate slid along a track that ran through containment towers to keep it upright. Cal-OSHA standards require that “[a]ll horizontal sliding gates . . . be equipped with positive stops or devices that limit the gate travel to the designed fully open and closed positions.” Without stops, the gates are unsafe. The Terra Bella gate lacked stops.

ABC’s location scout, Gary Watt, visited the premises multiple times but did not inspect the gates. During his visits, Watt looked for clearly observable problems, “what they call bear traps, anything that could be a safety hazard or anything that might present a danger to cast, crew, [or] the public.” Watt did not note that the gate was in any particular state of disrepair.

ABC hired Executive Assurance to provide security for the property during filming. On the day of filming, Reina Castro, a licensed security guard employed by Executive Assurance attempted to stop the Terra Bella gate from striking a truck that was backing out. The gate fell on her causing a broken leg, multiple fractures to her left shoulder, and torn ligaments and degenerative arthritis in her knee.

Castro sued ABC Studios, Inc. to recover for for her personal injuries.The trial court granted ABC’s motion for nonsuit under Privette v. Superior Court (1993) 5 Cal.4th 689 and its progeny, ruling that Castro had presented no evidence that ABC controlled the manner or mode by which its independent contractor’s employees, such as Castro, performed their work.

The Court of Appeal agreed that the Privette doctrine applies to this case and that Castro failed to adduce evidence of an exception in the unpublished case of Castro v. ABC Studios.

Subject to certain exceptions, the Privette doctrine bars employees of independent contractors from recovering damages from the hirer of the contractor for workplace injuries.

The rationale is twofold. First, because workers’ compensation insurance generally provides the exclusive remedy for employees who are injured on the job, allowing the employee to recover from the contractor’s hirer, who did not cause the injury, would unfairly subject the hirer to greater liability than that faced by the contractor who was negligent.

Secondly, by hiring an independent contractor, the hirer implicitly delegates to the contractor any tort law duty it owes to the contractor’s employees to ensure the safety of the specific workplace that is the subject of the contract.

Ten former National Football League (NFL) players have been charged in the Eastern District of Kentucky for their alleged roles in a nationwide fraud on a health care benefit program for retired NFL players.

The alleged fraud targeted the Gene Upshaw NFL Player Health Reimbursement Account Plan (the Plan), which was established pursuant to the 2006 collective bargaining agreement and provided for tax-free reimbursement of out-of-pocket medical care expenses that were not covered by insurance and that were incurred by former players, their wives and their dependents – up to a maximum of $350,000 per player.  According to the charging documents, over $3.9 million in false and fraudulent claims were submitted to the Plan, and the Plan paid out over $3.4 million on those claims between June 2017 and December 2018.

Two separate indictments filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky outline two alleged conspiracies involving different players related to the same scheme to defraud the Plan. Those charged in the indictments are the following:

— Robert McCune, 40, of Riverdale, Georgia, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud, nine counts of wire fraud and nine counts of health care fraud.

— John Eubanks, 36, of Cleveland, Mississippi; Tamarick Vanover, 45, of Tallahassee, Florida; and Carlos Rogers, 38, of Alpharetta, Georgia, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud, two counts of wire fraud and two counts of health care fraud.

— Clinton Portis, 38, of McLean, Virginia; Ceandris Brown, 36, of Fresno, Texas; James Butler, 37, of Atlanta, Georgia; and Fredrick Bennett, 35, of Port Wentworth, Georgia, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud, one count of wire fraud and one count of health care fraud.

— Correll Buckhalter, 41, of Colleyville, Texas, and Etric Pruitt, 38, of Theodore, Alabama, are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud.

In addition, the government has filed notice that it intends to file criminal informations charging Joseph Horn, 47, of Columbia, South Carolina, and Donald “Reche” Caldwell, 40, of Tampa, Florida, with conspiracy to commit health care fraud in the Eastern District of Kentucky.

The indictments charge that the scheme to defraud involved the submission of false and fraudulent claims to the Plan for expensive medical equipment – typically between $40,000 and $50,000 for each claim – that was never purchased or received.  

The expensive medical equipment described on the false and fraudulent claims included hyperbaric oxygen chambers, cryotherapy machines, ultrasound machines designed for use by a doctor’s office to conduct women’s health examinations and electromagnetic therapy devices designed for use on horses.

According to allegations in the indictments, McCune, Eubanks, Vanover, Buckhalter, Rogers and others recruited other players into the scheme by offering to submit or cause the submission of these false and fraudulent claims in exchange for kickbacks and bribes that ranged from a few thousand dollars to $10,000 or more per claim submitted.  As part of the scheme, the defendants allegedly fabricated supporting documentation for the claims, including invoices, prescriptions and letters of medical necessity.  After the claims were submitted, McCune and Buckhalter allegedly called the telephone number provided by the Plan and impersonated certain other players in order to check on the status of the false and fraudulent claims.

The world has been told that the drug Tramadol, is safer than the OxyContins, the Vicodins, the fentanyls that have wreaked so much devastation. But now they are the root of what the United Nations named “the other opioid crisis” – an epidemic featured in fewer headlines than the American one, as it rages through the planet’s most vulnerable countries.

Mass abuse of the opioid tramadol spans continents, from India to Africa to the Middle East, creating international havoc some experts blame on a loophole in narcotics regulation and a miscalculation of the drug’s danger. The man-made opioid was touted as a way to relieve pain with little risk of abuse. Unlike other opioids, tramadol flowed freely around the world, unburdened by international controls that track most dangerous drugs.

But abuse is now so rampant that some countries are asking international authorities to intervene.

Grunenthal, the German company that originally made the drug, is campaigning for the status quo, arguing that it’s largely illicit counterfeit pills causing problems. International regulations make narcotics difficult to get in countries with disorganized health systems, the company says, and adding tramadol to the list would deprive suffering patients access to any opioid at all.

Tramadol has not been as deadly as other opioids, and the crisis isn’t killing with the ferocity of America’s struggle with the drugs. Still, individual governments from the U.S. to Egypt to Ukraine have realized the drug’s dangers are greater than was believed and have worked to rein in the tramadol trade. The north Indian state of Punjab, the center of India’s opioid epidemic, was the latest to crack down. The pills were everywhere, as legitimate medication sold in pharmacies, but also illicit counterfeits hawked by street vendors.

This year, authorities seized hundreds of thousands of tablets, banned most pharmacy sales and shut down pill factories, pushing the price from 35 cents for a 10-pack to $14. The government opened a network of treatment centers, fearing those who had become opioid addicted would resort to heroin out of desperation. Hordes of people rushed in, seeking help in managing excruciating withdrawal.

Jeffery Bawa, an officer with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, realized what was happening in 2016, when he traveled to Mali in western Africa, one of the world’s poorest countries, gripped by civil war and terrorism. They asked people for their most pressing concerns. Most did not say hunger or violence. They said tramadol.

Most of it was coming from India. The country’s sprawling pharmaceutical industry is fueled by cheap generics. Pill factories produce knock-offs and ship them in bulk around the world, in doses far exceeding medical limits.

In 2017, law enforcement reported that $75 million worth of tramadol from India was confiscated en route to the Islamic State terror group. Authorities intercepted 600,000 tablets headed for Boko Haram. Another 3 million were found in a pickup truck in Niger, in boxes disguised with U.N. logos. The agency warned that tramadol was playing “a direct role in the destabilization of the region.”

The United Kingdom and United States both regulated it in 2014. Tramadol was uncontrolled in Denmark until 2017, when journalists asked doctors to review studies submitted to regulators to support the claim that it has a low risk for addiction, said Dr. Karsten Juhl Jorgensen, acting director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre and one of the physicians who analyzed the materials. They all agreed that the documents did not prove it’s safer.