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by WILL FOLKS
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Fourteen months after her social media posts raised red flags regarding alleged executive misconduct at West Columbia, South Carolina-based drug manufacturer Nephron Pharmaceuticals, the crony capitalist’s top human resources officer is taking her former employer to court.
Nola Grant, Nephron’s former chief human resources officer, filed a complaint in South Carolina’s fifth judicial circuit last month accusing the company of racial discrimination, creating a hostile work environment based on race, disability discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent supervision and unlawful suppression of protected whistleblower activity.
At the heart of the complaint are Grant’s allegations – previously leveled in a hypothetical sense on social media – that Nephron habitually lied to federal regulators and engaged in a “CEO-directed ‘cover-up'” to avoid repercussions from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
According to the lawsuit, it was much worse than that… and far from hypothetical.
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Grant’s complaint contained the explosive allegation that during her tenure – which spanned from October 2022 through April 2025 – Nephron experienced “a loss of fentanyl, a Schedule II controlled substance.”
Any loss of Schedule II drugs requires a company to immediately notify the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but according to Grant the company failed to do so – expressing “unease and fear of reporting the matter to the proper authorities.”
“Rather than complying with its mandatory DEA reporting obligations, Nephron failed to report the fentanyl loss to the DEA or any other required authority,” Grant’s complaint noted.
Grant ultimately reported the fentanyl loss, which her complaint described as “protected whistleblower activity.” After she made the report, Nephron’s “retaliatory conduct escalated” against her, Grant claimed, ultimately resulting in her “wrongful termination.”
Nephron chief executive officer Lou Kennedy is repeatedly singled out in the lawsuit, including allegations that she “lied to the FDA” regarding the storage of certain drugs at one of the company’s warehouses. In fact, she reiterated details from the hypothetical allegations leveled last spring when she referenced Kennedy orchestrating a “late-night clearing and hauling off of the entire contents” of the warehouse… undertaken in anticipation of FDA inquiry.”
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Nephron also allegedly provided FDA investigators with “altered surveillance footage” when they requested to review the preceding 24 hours of video surveillance from the warehouse.
“(This) conduct… constitutes the destruction and concealment of evidence and the submission of altered records to a federal regulatory agency, in violation of federal law governing FDA-regulated 503B outsourcing facilities, and exposes (Nephron) to potential criminal referral, civil penalties, and suspension or revocation of its 503B operations,” the complaint alleged.
“503B” is the FDA’s designation for facilities which are permitted to “manufacture large batches (of pharmaceuticals) with or without prescriptions to be sold to healthcare facilities for office use only.”
Facilities which manufacture these batches must follow the FDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) regulations in order to “assure proper design, monitoring, and control of manufacturing processes and facilities.”
Nephron has consistently struggled to meet these standards, prompting multiple FDA investigations – including several visits to the campus exclusively reported by FITSNews.
Grant’s lawsuit further accused Kennedy of filing fraudulent insurance claims and falsifying audit data to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
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RELATED | NEPHRON IMPLOSION ACCELERATING
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According to Grant, Nephron has repeatedly invoked a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she signed with the company “as a basis to silence her.”
“(Nephron)’s repeated invocation of the NDA was not a good-faith enforcement of legitimate confidentiality interests but rather a deliberate and systematic strategy to intimidate Ms. Grant, suppress her protected whistleblower activity, and prevent her from reporting federal and state law violations to regulatory agencies,” her complaint alleged.
All of the allegations in Grant’s complaint are allegedly corroborated by “multiple witnesses” as well as “multiple audio recordings.”
Nephron fled the state of Florida under a cloud of scrutiny and rushed into South Carolina’s welcoming arms a decade-and-a-half ago. Palmetto State politicians – led by then-governor Nikki Haley – gave the company tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies to relocate to West Columbia. Haley spearheaded the Palmetto State’s initial corporate welfare package for Nephron, but others have since followed her lead. When the company opened its new glove facility in December 2022, for example, governor Henry McMaster and lieutenant governor Pamela Evette both attended the ribbon-cutting.
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we continue to track this civil complaint… and any subsequent criminal investigations it may prompt.
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THE COMPLAINT…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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SOUND OFF…
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