News Clips & Coverage

A West Allis nonprofit that operates nationwide has agreed to pay $1.9 million to the federal government after a whistleblower exposed it for repackaging Chinese products and claiming they had been made by visually impaired Americans.
Such claims helped Industries for the Blind and Visually Impaired earnthe agency Ability One certification, a major advantage in winning contracts with government agencies like the U.S. Navy and Air Force.
Paul Inzeo, the company's former marketing...

Whistleblower’s FCA suit to end in $1.9 million settlement Failure to provide goods made by blind, disabled U.S. workers Industries for the Blind Inc. will pay $1.9 million to settle a whistleblower’s claims that it violated the False Claims Act by providing the federal government with goods from China and Taiwan despite promising to provide goods produced by disadvantaged workers in the United States, according to a Tuesday news release.
IBI allegedly engaged in a...

Almost a quarter of hotels were delinquent on their mortgage payments in July, the highest rate on record, according to a new report.
Some 23.4% of commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) loans, which finance many hotels, were more than 30 days late in July, totaling $20.6 billion. Only 1.34% of hotel CMBS loans were in default in July 2019, according to Trepp, a New York City-based data, analytics and technology company.
“If hotels don't get more help, we will start to see...

It’s all too easy for operators to leave the fine print of their brands’ insurance policies to agents. The world of insurance is complex, and often operators take their providers’ recommendations at face value, or simply let their policies roll into a new year with little examination. But as the industry continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, operators need a new, more vigilant approach to their coverage.
As most operators purchase insurance through an...

Three hotel operators indebted to Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) trusts sued in the Southern District of New York federal court because they received no answer from lenders about whether accepting Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) money would violate their loan agreement.
“Borrowers wish to avoid any declaration of default or declaration that a Springing Recourse Event has occurred because they accessed PPP funds to keep their business above water while continuing to...

The coronavirus left Grainger Rickenbaker, a 21-year-old Drexel University student and hockey goalie, without in-person lectures, seminars or labs as the school switched to remote learning.
So he sued.
Rickenbaker is suing the Philadelphia university for the pro-rated price of his tuition, saying he didn’t get what he paid for. His lawsuit is one of at least 100 closure-related suits filed against colleges and universities in federal and state courts.
In total, more than...

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a tremendous toll on America’s elderly population. Nursing home residents have been hit the hardest, with 20,000 dead across the country as of mid-May. Many of those people have died due to negligence from staff and administrators. Naturally, families want to sue the culprits. Meanwhile nursing home operators are demanding immunity, often with success.

Prominent Elder Law attorney Brian Mahany explains, “If you live in Florida and watch the news, nursing home administrators are demanding immunity from lawsuits and even criminal prosecution. So far, 16 states have already caved to pressure from well-paid healthcare lobbyists.”

Mahany has it right. States that have passed COVID-19 immunity laws for nursing homes include some of the hardest hit by the pandemic. New York is one of them. As residents get infected and die en masse at facilities all over NYS, legal liability for inadequate care has become a thing of the past. When residents need the highest quality of care to prevent Coronavirus infection, nursing home administrators get a free pass to disregard mandatory care standards....

At a time when thecoronavirus pandemicisderailing thecommercial mortgage-backed securitieslandscape, a whistleblowerin Seattle has thrown another wrench into theCMBS market.
But financial services expertssaid there isn't enough informationto draw definitive conclusions about whether the complaint is credible orif it is, whether it would have broad implications for the CMBS market.
On Friday,a report from ProPublicadetailed a complaint by John Flynn, a mortgage insider who runs CRE...

Operators of hotels in several states have asked New York and Florida federal courts to rule that they can participate in the Paycheck Protection Program without fear of triggering a default on prior loans whose terms forbid taking on more debt.
In a pair of complaints filed separately Friday against U.S. Bank NA and Wilmington Trust NA, the hotel operators said they're desperate for the aid but are concerned about possible repercussions for their existing loans, which are held in...

In 2016, a New Yorker reporter noted that contractors outnumbered U.S. troops three to one in Afghanistan. Part of the reason for this was that moving around on the ground was so dangerous in Afghanistan that our government basically paid local people to risk their lives, for example, by driving trucks and transporting materials for the U.S. military.

“The jobs were dangerous–more contractors had been killed so far that year than U.S. soldiers–but the payoff was substantial,” The New Yorker stated. “Between 2007 and 2014, the U.S. spent eighty-nine billion dollars on contracting in Afghanistan.”

But in an impoverished war zone, U.S. military contracts have inevitably led to large-scale corruption, and as several lawsuits now allege, the result has often been that our country has indirectly funded its own enemies.

Trucking contractors in Afghanistan, for example, were described in a House Committee report as fueling “a vast protection racket run by a shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials, and perhaps others,” adding that “protection payments for safe passage [were] a significant potential source of funding for the Taliban.”...