Allergan inks $13M settlement in whistleblower marketing suit

For years, whistleblowers and their attorneys have been battling with Allergan over claims the company illegally promoted eye drugs by providing valuable consulting and other services to doctors. Their efforts proved worthwhile as the company agreed to hand over $13 million to settle kickback allegations with the U.S. and 19 states.

Filed in 2009, the lawsuit alleged that Allergan representatives targeted doctors around the country and pushed Restasis and other eye drugs for off-label uses through an “Allergan Access” membership program for doctors. Two Philadelphia-area ophthalmologists brought the case against Allergan and will receive a share of the payment under the False Claims Act.

To induce doctors to write more scripts, Allergan offered business advisory services plus membership in an “Allergan Access” website that provided financial analysis, human resource tools, continuing education resources and more, the suit said. The company also offered payments for doctor attendance at meetings and dinners, according to the lawsuit.

Medicare, Medicaid and other tax-funded health programs have “been caused to pay false or fraudulent claims for reimbursement” of Allergan drugs due to the scheme, the whistleblowers said in their complaint. read more »

Congress remembers a whistleblower – and helps every federal worker

The Veterans Administration (“VA”) is the most notorious anti-whistleblower federal agency in the U.S. government. Recent statistics paint a dangerous and hostile picture for any VA employee who reports patient abuse. Over 30 percent of all federal employee whistleblower cases come out of the VA, and in 2016 alone over 1,100 retaliation cases were filed by VA employees with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Behind these numbers are real people, suffering for doing the right thing. One was Dr. Chris Kirkpatrick, a clinical psychologist whose first job out of school was at the VA Medical Center in Tomah, Wis. Dr. Kirkpatrick witnessed patient abuse. Patients were being over-medicated. Dr. Kirkpatrick did the right thing, and blew the whistle, properly raising his concern at a patient-care meeting with other doctors. Retaliation was swift.

Dodd-Frank leaves muddle on forced arbitration of whistleblower claims

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide next term whether whistleblowers who report concerns within their companies are entitled to sue under the robust anti-retaliation provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, even though Dodd-Frank elsewhere identifies whistleblowers as employees who tell the government about corporate wrongdoing. But when it comes to whistleblowers, defining who qualifies for which protections isn’t Dodd-Frank’s only inconsistency.

A new decision by a federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, exposes a weird discrepancy in how Dodd-Frank deals with whistleblowers whose employment contracts include mandatory arbitration provisions. As it turns out, the law explicitly says whistleblowers cannot be forced to arbitrate anti-retaliation claims under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act – but Dodd-Frank does not specifically address whether employers can compel whistleblowers to arbitrate their anti-retaliation claims under Dodd-Frank itself. read more »

Claims of whistleblower retaliation at Beckley VA Hospital

A whistleblower at the Beckley (West Virginia) VA Medical Center (BVAMC) alleges that the Veteran’s Hospital engaged in numerous corrupt acts - including a secret waitlist. When she spoke out, she claims, she was terminated.  Tammy Mitchell is speaking out for the first time about the conditions she witnessed at BVAMC.

A registered nurse for more than two decades Mitchell and worked at the BVAMC starting in 2006; she became the Home Based Primary Care (HBPC) Director at the BVAMC on January 18, 2009. read more »

How a Civil War-era law is being used to punish scientific fraudsters

Duke University has been drawing a lot of attention in academia lately — not because of the stellar academics or solid basketball team, but because the university is at the heart of a potentially blockbuster lawsuit involving three of its scientists. The suit is the latest attempt to use a 19th-century law for relatively new purposes: putting universities on the hook for grant money that went to researchers found guilty of fraud.

The case, which is being brought under the False Claims Act (FCA), centers on allegations that researchers at Duke used faked data to win tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. Although the principal in the fraud, Erin Potts-Kant, has had 16 papers retracted and has admitted faking her data, and Duke has acknowledged that it knew Potts-Kant was cooking the books, what remains unclear is how much the university knew and when it knew it. So far, the suit — which is being brought by Joseph Thomas, a former colleague of Potts-Kant — has survived several motions to dismiss and is now in the discovery phase. (Thomas’s brother, John, is one of the attorneys representing him.)

The FCA, or “Lincoln Law,” is a federal statute with roots in the Civil War, as the Union tried to prevent materiel suppliers from bilking the government. To encourage whistleblowers, the law provides for a 30 percent payout to people who bring graft to the attention of prosecutors, as well as treble damages for the government — which means that cheating on a multimillion-dollar contract or grant can lead to serious penalties for the fraudster and riches for the whistleblower. read more »