You have to feel sorry for whistleblower Darilyn Johnson. The former billing clerk thought she had a sure-fire, double-barrel False Claims Act (FCA) case against the medical clinic that fired her. Barrel one was her basic FCA case. Darilyn could prove that when the allergy clinic filled out its Medicare …
Services that are Worth Less Aren’t Necessarily Worthless
February 25, 2016 Leave a Comment
The Sixth Circuit brought a refreshing sense of reality to the government’s sometimes unreal calculation of damages in False Claims Act (FCA) cases. In this case the government had sought, and won at the trial level, an award of $763,000 against a contractor because of a subcontractor’s underpayment of …
Criminal Conviction Leaves Defendant Defenseless in FCA Civil Action
February 2, 2016 Leave a Comment
Pity Dr. Christina Clardy. In 2011 she was convicted of health care fraud, sentenced to 135 months in prison, and ordered to pay $16 million in restitution. Then in 2014 the government added Christina as a defendant in its pending False Claims Act (FCA) civil action against her cronies in the physical …
Triple Damages Sufficiently Punitive to Bar Punitive Damages
January 5, 2016 Leave a Comment
Jennifer Gierer says she was fired because she expressed concerns about her employer’s submission of false durable medical equipment claims to Medicare. So she sued her employer and her boss, alleging (a) retaliation under the False Claims Act, (b) unpaid wages and commissions under Missouri law, (c) unjust …
Hospital Chain Pays Heavy Price for Being Too Clever
August 12, 2015 Leave a Comment
Finding that Community Hospital Systems had been “too clever by half” in negotiating a global settlement agreement for seven whistleblower suits, a federal judge ordered the chain to pay the attorneys’ fees of all the whistleblowers—not just the first to file. That’s on top of the $97 million Community …