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Whistleblower News & Views
February 2009
Forest Laboratories: A Tale of Two Whistleblowers
Alison
Frankel, The American Lawyer
2-27-09 --
Here is a qui tam riddle: What does Wednesday's
False Claims Act suit against Forest Laboratories have in
common with the FCA cases against Medco Health Solutions (settled
in 2006 for $155 million), Bristol-Myers Squibb (settled
in 2007 for $515 million), and Cephalon Inc. (settled
in 2008 for $425 million)? . . . Oh sure, they're all suits
against pharmaceutical companies accused of illegal marketing. And
yes, they were all initiated by whistleblowers who then persuaded
the federal government to intervene. But there's something else that
ties the cases together: Each featured a whistle-blower named Joseph
Piacentile, a nonpracticing New Jersey physician who now makes a
living suing drug companies. . . . Piacentile is what you might call
a professional whistleblower. According to his lawyer, David Stone
of the Short Hills, New Jersey, office of
Boies, Schiller & Flexner, Piacentile used to be one of
the doctors courted with lavish attention by drug companies. Then he
stopped going to the fancy parties and started filing False Claims
Act suits based on what he'd seen and learned. Not all of his cases
have been as spectacularly successful as those against Medco,
Bristol-Myers, and Cephalon, but with one-third of the government's
recovery going to whistle-blowers in successful cases, Piacentile
doesn't need to win 'em all.
September
2008
PENNSYLVANIA
Cephalon to Pay $431 Million to Settle
Whistleblower Suits
Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer
9-30-08 --
To resolve a spate of whistleblower lawsuits, drug manufacturer
Cephalon Inc. of Frazer, Pa., has agreed to pay $431
million in civil and criminal fines for illegally promoting
"off-label" uses for three of its drugs, federal prosecutors
said. . . . In a
global settlement with the U.S. Justice Department,
Cephalon agreed to pay $375 million to settle False Claims Act
claims by the Medicaid and Medicare trust funds and to plead
guilty to a single misdemeanor criminal charge of distribution
of misbranded drugs and pay $50 million in fines and forfeiture.
. . . Cephalon also announced that it has agreed to pay $6.15
million to Connecticut and $700,000 to Massachusetts to settle
related investigations by the attorneys general of those states.
. . . The four whistleblowers will share a reward of more than
$46.4 million, according to court records. Prosecutors said
three of the whistleblower cases were filed by former Cephalon
sales representatives who were disturbed by the company's
off-label marketing practices. . . . As part of the Justice
Department settlement, Cephalon agreed to enter into a five-year
"corporate integrity agreement" that requires the company to
send doctors a letter about the settlement and give them a means
to report questionable conduct of sales representatives.
December 2006
CALIFORNIA
A bad precedent for whistleblowers
CASES such as Stephen Heller make whistleblowers an endangered
species.
12-08-06 -- The
Van Nuys actor and temporary worker recently pleaded guilty to a
computer crime, agreed to pay a $10,000 fine, and write an apology
to Diebold and its Los Angeles attorneys, Jones Day, for making
confidential Diebold legal memos public in 2004. . . . Heller had
copied and released 500 pages of memos and other data indicating
that Diebold violated state election laws by peddling in Alameda and
other counties software that had not been tested or approved for use
in elections. The Argus published some of the documents. Shortly
thereafter, state election officials decertified Diebold
touch-screen systems statewide. . . . Though critics of electronic
voting consider Heller a brave whistleblower with the public's
interest at heart, the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office
announced an indictment on charges of unauthorized access to a
computer, second-degree burglary and receiving stolen goods. Each
charge could have resulted in his being sentenced to four years in
prison. . . . Working as a word processor, he had heard a taped
statement by a Jones Day attorney describing ways Diebold could get
around state law and its $12 million contract with Alameda County. .
. . Heller then did what many right-minded, concerned citizens would
do. He went public with information indicating wrongdoing. Many
consider that responsible conduct. . . . We agree with Cindy Cohn of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation that this case was a "miscarriage
of justice."
COLORADO
Whistleblower can pursue Medicare fraud
By Linda Fantin, The Salt Lake
Tribune
12-06-06 --
A Denver appeals court has revived a whistleblower's 1999 claims
that Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah assisted a
university-owned lab in bilking the government out of millions of
Medicare dollars in the 1990s and then fired her for complaining. .
. . The ruling, handed down Tuesday, could have broad implications
for the insurer, the University of
Utah and the Regence employee
who fought for years to substantiate her claims in court. Edyth
Sikkenga was fired in April 1995 from Regence, the Medicare carrier
for the state of Utah. Sikkenga's job included
reviewing claims submitted by medical service providers, including
the Associated Regional and University Pathologists Inc., or ARUP, a
laboratory entirely owned by and located at the U of U's Medical
Center. . . . In her 1999 lawsuit, Sikkenga claims she told her
supervisors that ARUP was presenting false claims for Medicare
reimbursement. . . . Specifically, she said the lab was manipulating
medical codes to make procedures appear to be medically necessary -
a condition for payment under the federal insurance program for the
elderly and disabled. The suit, which sought recovery of taxpayer
funds and damages for Sikkenga, was dismissed in stages by U.S.
District Court Judge Dale Kimball, with the final claims against
ARUP being rejected in August 2004.
OREGON
Ore. woman wins $365,000 in whistleblower suit
By The Associated Press
12-05-06 --
A former airport employee has won a whistleblower lawsuit after
claiming she was fired for disclosing that some airport security
workers slept on duty and others didn’t have proper training. . . .
The suit against Jackson County contended that
Lynda Longfellow of Butte Falls, a former parking
enforcement officer, had been retaliated against by her superiors at
the county airport, infringing on her free-speech rights. . . . A
jury of six women and one man in U.S. District Court awarded
Longfellow $365,000 in damages on Nov. 29 after reviewing evidence
including a state report that the county-owned airport had hired 19
security people without the proper training or certification in 2004
and 2005. . . . Among the allegations were that two airport security
personnel were fired for sleeping on the job and another employee
was fired after the theft of a laptop computer. . . . “This trial
focused on an epidemic of problems of security officers sleeping on
the job,” said Medford attorney Thad Guyer, who represented
Longfellow.
November 2006
CONNECTICUT
Whistleblower Mehta back to work at plant
Engineer says he was fired for raising security concern at Conn.
nuclear facility
By Meera Rajagopalan
11-23-06 -- Sham Mehta, a resident of East
Lyme, Conn. and an engineer with the
Millstone Power Station, returned to work on Nov. 6, nearly 10
months after he was let go, after Connecticut’s Department of Public
Utility Control ordered Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, the company
that operates the plant, to reinstate him. . . . Mehta, who was the
supervisor at the employee concerns program at the nuclear plant,
alleges that he was fired for repeatedly raising security concerns
relating to alarms at the plant. . . . Mehta began work as a shift
technical adviser at the plant, the only unconditional position
among the three offered by Dominion. Hank Murray, attorney for
Mehta, said his client was glad to go back to work, to a normal
schedule. “He was delighted to be back at work,” Murray said. . . .
Peter Hyde, a spokesman for Dominion, declined comment on the latest
development, as the matter is under investigation, but confirmed
that Mehta started work at the plant.
NEW JERSEY
Burlco whistleblower wins $3.3M verdict
By Carol
Comegno, Courier-Post Staff
11-03-06 --
A jury has awarded a Cinnaminson woman $3.3 million in a whistleblower lawsuit against her former
employer, crafts retailer A.C. Moore of
Moorestown. . . . The award to Kathleen Stahl came this week following a week-long
trial before Superior Court Judge Craig L. Wellerson in
Mount Holly. . . . In the lawsuit,
Stahl said she was forced to resign from the Mooresotwn store
because of harassment by managers. She said the harassment began
when a manager was terminated because she told superiors he was
forcing employees to work overtime and paying them with A.C. Moore
gift cards instead of salary.
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