Whistleblower Eligibility

Constantine Cannon Partner Gordon Schnell Quoted in Law360 on the Rise of "Outside" Whistleblowers

Following the blockbuster False Claims Act settlement by AmerisourceBergen Corp., Law360 reported that 3 of the 4 whistleblowers who brought the case forward were not employees of the company. Rather, two were pharmacy workers at a Michigan hospital and one was a Florida physician group, and all of them were exposed to the alleged misconduct in the regular course of their work. As Law360 explains, these "outsiders" represent a new...

Inman writes on whistleblower case brought by outsider

Constantine Cannon partner Mary Inman published an article in RAC Monitor about a lawsuit brought against Providence Health & Services and its consultant J.A. Thomas and Associates LLC (JATA) by Integra Med Analytics LLC, a data analysis firm that uses statistical analysis of publicly available data to attempt to uncover and prove fraud. Integra alleged that it analyzed seven years’ worth of publicly-available claims data from Providence hospitals that used JATA...

Top-10 Tips For Would-Be Whistleblowers

There are numerous laws that protect whistleblowers. Many whistleblower reward laws and other whistleblower protection laws provide protections to whistleblowers from retaliation – through firings, demotions, or other adverse employee actions – for reporting misconduct. Becoming a whistleblower can be a difficult ordeal. The laws protecting whistleblowers have vastly improved. But the risk of retaliation or some form of estrangement, alienation, or even blacklisting remains very real. A whistleblower may...

Massachusetts High Court Bars Companies as Whistleblowers Under State False Claims Act

In a decision handed down Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that only individuals, not companies, have standing to bring a whistleblower action under the State's False Claims Act. The decision in Phone Recovery Services, LLC. v. Verizon of New England, Inc. is groundbreaking in its limitation of who qualifies as a whistleblower. At the same time, it likely is quite limited in its reach as it is premised...

Catch of the Week – 3M Company

On July 26, 2018, DOJ announced that Saint Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Company would pay $9.1 million to settle allegations that it knowingly sold defective dual-ended “Combat Arms” earplugs to the United States military without disclosing defects that made the devices ineffective and may have caused thousands of soldiers to suffer significant hearing loss and tinnitus (or ringing in the ears). Caught for its misdeeds and compelled to enter a settlement...