Former prominent New Orleans attorney Ashton O’Dwyer (who now resides in Houston) appearing before the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) on June 9, 2022.
O’Dwyer’s frustrations with LSP stem from a pretty severe beating he endured at the hands of LSP in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when he refused to leave his home and/or surrender a gun he possessed for protection.
More recently, O’Dwyer has been engaging in a deep (and we do mean deep) dive into the filings associated with the New Orleans Archdiocese’s bankruptcy. O’Dwyer has been supplying us with those filings, and they constitute incredible eye openers.
This feature is actually going to be about the easiest post we’ve ever done because O’Dwyer has drawn the attention of Jeff Crouere, who hosts the daily “Ringside Politics” show on WGSO Radio in New Orleans.
On Monday, September 23, 2024, O’Dwyer commenced with the first installment of what is to be a three-installment feature on the incredible revelations these bankruptcy filings are exposing.
We do not want to take anything away from nor add anything to the fine work that O’Dwyer and Crouere have done and will be doing on this subject matter. Accordingly, we are merely going to strongly encourage our site visitors to listen to Segment One of this fascinating feature. Anyone is welcome to do so by the following simple steps:
2. Advance the tape to the 1-hour, 20-minute, and 25-second point.
3. Listen until the end of the show (a 15-second sequential fast forwarding is available to advance through commercials if desired).
We know everyone choosing to listen to O’Dwyer’s incredible revelations, which are derived from countless hours of meticulous readings of bankruptcy filings, will come away stunned. Furthermore, O’Dwyer indicates to us that the other two segments will be even more intriguing.
Accordingly, we can’t wait to publish guidance for our site visitors to listen to Installment Two of this fascinating series!!
Jonathan Porter, Partner with the law firm Husch Blackwell and former DOJ prosecutor who, on February 21, 2024, agreed with Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns that the U. S. Government’s evidence against Dr. Shiva Akula was “underwhelming.”
On March 6, 2024, we produced this feature wherein we focused on Kelly Anderson, a key prosecution witness in the Medicare fraud trial of Dr. Shiva Akula, an infectious disease doctor but who also owned what became the largest hospice operator in Louisiana, Canon Hospice.
Specifically, we posed the question entailing whether Anderson may obtain a “boat load of money” arising from her qui tam lawsuit wherein she assisted Federal prosecutors (for four years and without Dr. Akula’s knowledge despite continuing to be on his payroll) in obtaining medical records, participating in recorded phone calls with Akula, and other similar actions at the behest of the FBI and U. S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans. Our assertion was that Anderson, just as Akula defense attorney David DeVillers argued in opening arguments of the trial, was in fact going to come into a “boat load of money” which we speculated was likely to be in the neighborhood of $900,000.
We had previously, on November 7, 2023, presented this feature, which focused on the fact that Akula was convicted on 23 counts of Medicare fraud. In that feature, we provided links for our day-by-day coverage of the trial.
What we’re about to do is to provide our final video feature on the Akula matter and integrate Porter and Perarske’s commentary at key segments of that video with Burns providing some postmortem observations on the trial. First, however, we’d like to remind everyone that, in our written commentary from Day 4 of the Akula trial, Burns had this to say:
Despite its best efforts (and they did present a very excruciatingly-detailed case along with a considerable amount of innuendo), we believe the prosecution has failed to directly tie Akula to any purposeful intent to defraud the government. We would vote to acquit on all counts, and we predict that the jury will do the same after an estimated 4-5 hours of deliberation.
Obviously, we called that one dead wrong, and some of the postmortem observations we’re about to present in the video will, we believe, help explain why. Nevertheless, we stand by our contention that the U. S. Government failed to clear the bar of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but, as we have emphasized, it’s not what we think that matters (nor even Porter for that matter). It’s the verdict the jury rendered that matters, and that jury found Akula guilty after a rather short period of deliberations. Furthermore, we stress the need to honor that verdict as being respectful of our judicial system and not do as Plaintiff attorney Phil Preis recently did after the Stanford victims trial and blame the jury for why the verdict didn’t go his way (see this feature).
Okay. Now for that video:
Sound Off Louisiana final wrap up of the Akula criminal trial incorporating commentary by Porter and Pekarske’s 2/21/24 podcast and Burns providing some final postmortem observations of the criminal trial.
We find Porter and Pekarske’s observations in the above video to be very intriguing on this whole matter and, just as the subheading says on their podcast about ways for health care providers to avoid Dr. Akula’s fate, Burns too emphasizes near the end of the above video that, for any doctors who may be, “playing loose with those Medicare codes,” tighten it up!
So, that’s the final wrap of the Dr. Shiva Akula criminal trial unless and until there may be a ruling from the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans entailing Akula’s appeal of his conviction. We hope all our site visitors who took the time to follow the matter found it interesting and informative.
Former LSP Trooper Carl Cavalier visits with Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns immediately after a court hearing in Federal Court for the Middle District of Louisiana on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
On June 30, 2024, we produced this feature letting everyone know that LSP whistleblower Carl Cavalier had to end up filing bankruptcy and that fact was likely to significantly complicate the resolution of the attorney fees to be shared between his two attorneys, the Craft Law Firm and the Carver Law Firm.
In that feature, during the 4:48 – 7:22 mark of this video on the feature, Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns indicated that, despite guidance he’d gotten that those attorneys would merely become unsecured creditors in the Cavalier bankruptcy, Burns felt that wasn’t “equitable” and that Craft, in particular, should have a “priority claim” on her legal fees because it was her efforts (notwithstanding serious reservations Burns and many others have over the overall handling of Cavalier’s case by Craft) which caused the $200,000 settlement from LSP to even materialize in the first place.
Now that the Lawsuit has resulted in a recovery of $200,000, both firms sought recovery under their respective 40% contingency fee agreements which gave rise to a contentious dispute between the law firms as to the other firm’s entitlement.
In an effort to avoid the necessity for the Trustee to file formal claim objections that would likely have resulted in protracted litigation, undersigned counsel worked with both parties to reach a global consensual resolution. After multiple discussions between (and among) the parties relating to the history of the Lawsuit and after careful review and consideration of the pleadings in the Lawsuit, the Trustee has reached a compromise with the Carter-Ivey Claimants and the Craft Claimants.
The Trustee agrees to the approval of the allowance of one contingency fee of 40% of the $200,000 Settlement Payment (i.e., $80,000, hereinafter the “Allowed Fee”) to be shared by the Carver-Ivey Claimants and the Craft Claimants.
The Craft Claimants will be paid $72,000 (i.e., 90% of the Allowed Fee) in full satisfaction of their claims against the estate.
The Carver-Ivey Claimants will be paid $8,000 (i.e., 10% of the Allowed Fee) in full satisfaction of their claims against the estate.
Being perfectly candid, as much as we disagree with the manner in which Craft declined to honor the wishes of her client, Cavalier, entailing him not wanting to settle, we do completely agree with her arguments that she should have been entitled to the entire $80,000 in legal contingency fees as it was her efforts that obtained the $200,000 settlement.
We also agree with her legal arguments that the Carver law firm should have received legal fees only if they had procured additional settlement dollars beyond the $200,000 Craft obtained. Nevertheless, we’re sure Craft felt it better to essentially toss the Carver firm a small bone rather than drag the whole matter out in protracted litigation. After all, the settlement offer was made almost two full years ago!
That act of finalizing the attorney fees, along with the associated authorization for LSP to pay the bankruptcy trustee the full $200,000 for distribution, essentially draws to a close all of the Cavalier matter. With that, we want to present this video of Cavalier appearing with Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns for a video focusing on Cavalier’s upbeat outlook on his future and his sharing of lessons that he learned as an LSP whistleblower. Here’s that video:
September 18, 2024: Cavalier shares with viewers his upbeat assessment of his future and also his takes on lessons learned as an LSP whistleblower.
In the preceding video, at the 6:12 mark, Burns began making reference to one of our very first features, which was this June 17, 2015 feature on whistleblower Corey delaHoussaye. In the video above, Burns indicated, as demonstrated from the 6:20 – 6:25 mark, that, “At least that didn’t happen to you. It could have been worse.” What Burns was referring to was the fact that, after District Attorney Scott Perrilloux failed in obtaining an indictment against delaHoussaye (over $6,000 in alleged payroll fraud when delaHoussaye had reported a staggering $50+ million in FEMA fraud), Perrilloux proceeded with a Bill of Information to pursue delaHoussaye (Perrilloux would subsequently dismiss all charges against delaHoussaye). We make that disclosure here only because viewers would not have a clue what Burns referenced in the video above without this supplemental disclosure.
Finally, as Burns indicated, we’re choosing to reproduce the audios of Craft and Cavalier (from this December 26, 2022 feature) wherein Cavalier demonstrates how strongly that he did not want to settle the litigation. As Burns states in the video above, for anyone who has not set aside the time to listen to the audios, we would highly recommend it because of the valuable behind-the-scenes insight we assert these recordings reveal:
9/2/22 (Friday) recorded phone call between Carl Cavalier and his former attorney, Jill Craft. We note that the phone call transpired a mere 16 days after an August 17, 2022 ruling by Magistrate Judge Richard Bourgeois wherein he granted an Order to Stay Discovery in Cavalier’s case as it pertains to LSP Col. Lamar Davis and LSP itself. Thus, Craft was likely both elated and somewhat (maybe more than somewhat) stunned once Defendants did agree to a $200,000 payout right on the heels of such an authoritative Court victory.
Okay. We are now going to provide the two other audio recordings of the other phone calls between Craft and Cavalier entered into the Court record:
9/27/22 (Tuesday) phone call between Craft and Cavalier.
10/13/22 (Thursday) phone call between Craft and Cavalier.
We’re wrapping this feature up in stating that we admire Cavalier’s upbeat approach to focusing on the future and not the past, and we wish him tremendous success in all of his future endeavors to include his much-anticipated future legal career.
