Whistleblower Law Blog

TweetThe Department of Justice has announced that defense contractor ATK Launch Systems Inc., based in Arlington, VA, has agreed to pay $36,967,160 to settle a False Claims Act qui tam lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah by a whistleblower employee, ATK flare program manager Kendall Dye. According the lawsuit, [...]

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TweetOn April 16 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Cablexpress Corp, which operates under the name CXtec, agreed to pay $2 million to settle allegations that it violated the Trade Agreements Act (TAA). The lawsuit claims that CXtec unlawfully sold to the federal government counterfeit gigabit interface converters (GBICs) as well as [...]

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TweetOn April 3, 2012, U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill announced that WellCare Health Plans, Inc. agreed to settle four lawsuits alleging violations of the federal False Claims Act (FCA).  WellCare is a Tampa, Florida-based company that provides managed health care services for 2.6 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries nationwide.  In all four law suits, whistleblowers filed suit [...]

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TweetR. Scott Oswald, managing principal of The Employment Law Group® recently published an article in The Washington Post discussing new expansions of employee rights in the areas of whistleblower protection and wage and hour law. In the piece, Mr. Oswald discussed recent developments in employee protection law that, if ignored, could result in penalties and [...]

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TweetHawthorn Pharmaceuticals Inc., a subsidiary of Cypress Pharmaceutical Inc., has agreed to pay the federal government and eleven states $2.8 million to settle a qui tam lawsuit filed in 2007 under seal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Robert Heiden, who worked for Hawthorn in Florida from October 2005 to [...]

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TweetOn March 13, 2012, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay the government $45 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged that the financial giant hid illegal fees in veteran’s home mortgage refinancing transactions and sought to collect on void government loan guarantees.  Two whistleblowers filed a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Acts in 2006 [...]

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TweetOn March 8, 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation creating a Medicaid fraud false claims act with strong bipartisan support.  If signed into law, the bill (SB 5978/HB 2571) would give the state a new means of pursuing Medicaid fraud and would allow individual citizens – qui tam relators – to bring whistleblower lawsuits [...]

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TweetThe Employment Law Group® law firm’s managing principal, R. Scott Oswald, has published an article in The Rocket Docket News, entitled “Blowing the Whistle in 2012: New Developments in Qui Tam Litigation”. The article focuses on recent developments in the field of qui tam litigation including: Recent interpretations of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act [...]

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TweetLast Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero approved a settlement in which Citigroup Inc., the nation’s third-largest bank, agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle claims that it defrauded the federal government by misleading the government into insuring high-risk home mortgages. The settlement  resolves a lawsuit against Citigroup brought by a whistleblower under the federal [...]

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TweetLast week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the federal agencies succeeded in recovering $4.1 billion in fraudulent healthcare payments in 2011.  This figure – detailed in the annual Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) report – is a record high, with recovered [...]

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TweetR. Scott Oswald, managing principal of The Employment Law Group® law firm will serve as a panelist in an upcoming presentation to the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Federal Bar Association on March 7, 2012. The topic of the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar is “Blowing the Whistle in 2012: New Developments in Qui Tam [...]

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TweetOn January 5, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a two-year statute of limitations was the appropriate period for assessing the timeliness of an action brought by a private employee alleging retaliation by a former employer in violation of the False Claims Act (FCA). The plaintiff, Michael Riddle, allegefs [...]

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TweetLast week, the U.S. government filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to reopen a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. that alleged the drug manufacturer paid kickbacks to physicians who prescribed its drug Genotropin. The case, U.S. ex rel. Peter Rost v. Pfizer Inc., began [...]

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TweetOn December 29, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that GE Healthcare Inc. agreed to pay thirty million dollars to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit  in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Amersham Health Inc., a holding company of  GE Healthcare. The DOJ alleged that from 2000 [...]

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TweetThe U.S. Department of Justice last week announced that it filed a complaint in a whistleblower lawsuit against AseraCare Hospice, a for-profit organization with 65 hospice providers in 19 states. The complaint alleges that AseraCare violated the False Claims Act when it knowingly enrolled in hospice care individuals who were not terminally ill with a [...]

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TweetLast week the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Virginia-based container shipper, Maersk Line Ltd., and its Denmark-based affiliate, Maersk Line, entered into a settlement agreement in which Maersk will pay the federal government nearly $32 million to resolve allegations that the companies submitted false claims involving cargo shipments to U.S. military personnel in [...]

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TweetIn U.S. ex rel. McNulty v. Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc., the United States District court for the Eastern District of Michigan held that a whistleblower’s severance agreement releasing all claims against the employer does not bar qui tam claims where the government was unaware of the underlying fraudulent activity when the severance agreement was signed.  [...]

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TweetOn Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it collected more than $3 billion in judgments and settlements of fraud cases under the False Claims Act (FCA) for fiscal year 2011. This marks the second consecutive year in which the DOJ exceeded $3 billion in recoveries and brings the total recovered since 2009 to [...]

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TweetLast week, Medtronic Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of medical devices, agreed to pay $23.5 million to settle two lawsuits alleging that the company paid kickbacks to doctors in an effort to encourage them to implant Medtronic pacemakers and defibrillators in their patients. The Department of Justice alleged that Medtronic paid physicians between $1000 and [...]

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TweetOn December 14, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a proposed rule that would require drug and medical device manufacturers to report their payments to physicians to federal regulators. These rules will implement the “physician payments sunshine” provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The proposed rules aim [...]

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TweetKV Pharmaceutical (KV), the parent company for Ethex Corporation (Ethex), this month agreed to pay $17 million to settle claims that Ethex of violated the False Claims Act when it allegedly reported false information to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). According to the complaint filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Ethex [...]

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TweetGenentech agreed to pay $20 million to settle a recent False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit – $5.7 million of which is being paid to whistleblower John Underwood who initiated the lawsuit.  Underwood alleges Genentech pressured its sales representatives to market off-label uses of Rituxan, a drug approved in 1997 to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Pharmaceutical laws [...]

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TweetR. Scott Oswald, Managing Principal of The Employment Law Group® law firm, was quoted in Medical Practice Compliance Alert, a biweekly newsletter aimed at assisting physicians with Medicare compliance so they do not run afoul of the Medicare rules and regulations, leading to charges of abuse or even fraud. Responding to questions regarding a whistleblower [...]

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TweetKristi Rossomando and her dental practice, The Children’s Dental Group P.C. agreed to pay $212,000 to settle claims that her practice fraudulently billed Medicaid for comprehensive oral evaluations that were never performed and for allowing staff to routinely provide care that should only be performed by a licensed dentist. Rossomando allegedly directed a hygienist to [...]

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TweetAccording to a Department of Justice Press Release, Oracle Corp. and Oracle America Inc. have agreed to pay $199.5 million plus interest for failing to meet their contractual obligations to the General Services Administration (GSA). This settlement relates to a contract Oracle entered into in 1998 to sell software licenses and technical support to government [...]

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