Guttman, Buschner & Brooks

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Emory Free Speech Forum: The History that Con law Doesn’t Cover

Join us for a Emory University School of Law Free Speech Forum, in-person on Thursday, October 6, 2022, 5:00 pm at Gambrell Hall and via Zoom when the topic will b, “The History of Con Law Doesn’t Cover.” the forum will feature nationally renown speakers the Honorable Theodore McKee, Harvey Silvergate and Reuben Guttman.

To RSVP for dinner or for Zoom link visit https://tinyurl.com/EFSFEvent

Speakers:

The Honorable Theodore McKee, 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Former Chief Judg eof the 3rd Circuit

Harvey Silvergate, Civil Lierties activist, author, colmnist and co-founder of the Foudnation for Individual Rights and Express (FIRE)

Reuben Guttman, American university Professor, Whistleblower Attorney, Foundling partner at GBBLegal, and Emory Law Alumnus.

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CLE: Must Know Rules of Evidence

Whether your cases go to trial or settle short of trial, there are rules of evidence that are essential to your case. This CLE course will highlight the key rules of evidence and demonstrate their practical usage from complaint investigation through the trial process.

It is a program that will provide insight for a range of practitioners from newly minted lawyers to seasoned litigators.

To learn more or to register visit: https://www.nacle.com/CLE/Courses/Must-Know-Rules-of-Evidence-2152

Lecturers for this Course:

GBB Legal’s Reuben A. Guttman and Esq.Justin S. Brooks, Esq.

Reuben A. Guttman, Esq.

Reuben Guttman is a founding member of Guttman, Buschner and Brooks PLLC. Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC (gbblegal.com) His practice involves civil rights, whistleblower representation, class actions and complex litigation. He has been counsel in False Claims Act cases that have returned over $6 Billion to the government.

The International Business Times has referred to him as “one of the world’s most prominent whistleblower attorneys.” He has been an adjunct professor at Emory Law School and a Senior Fellow in the school’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution; he is currently a faculty member of the American University School of Public Affairs and the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.

He has taught advocacy in the United States, Mexico and China. He is also a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. Mr. Guttman has published over 100 articles, opinion pieces, or book chapters. He is co-author with Rutgers Law Professor JC Lore of the text Pretrial Advocacy (National Institute for Trial Advocacy/Wolters Kluwer (2021). He is a founder of the website WhistleblowerLaws | The Source for Whistleblowers, Journalists, Legislators & Academics.

Justin S. Brooks, Esq.

Justin S. Brooks is a founding partner of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC. Mr. Brooks represents relators in qui tam litigation under the False Claims Act and other federal and state statutes and corporate clients in a wide variety of complex commercial and employment litigation. He also provides employment and compliance counseling to companies, represents institutional investors in shareholder derivative and corporate governance litigation. He has represented clients in claims brought under the Federal False Claims Act, securities laws, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and various employment discrimination, labor and environmental statutes.

Prior to founding the firm, Mr. Brooks practiced at a preeminent plaintiffs firm and two preeminent international defense firms where he focused primarily on qui tam litigation, corporate governance litigation, employment litigation and complex commercial litigation. His extensive experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants provides him with significant insight into how both sides work, benefiting clients, whether institutional investors, individuals, or classes of plaintiffs. He also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Suzanne B. Conlon of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Prior to graduating from law school, he served as an intern to Judge John. E. Sprizzo of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the Hon. Arlen Specter of the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Brooks authored numerous articles on class action litigation and other topics. Recent publications include: “The Ascertainability Fallacy and its Consequences,” AAJ Class Action Newsletter, Spring of 2015 and “Navigating Developing Challenges in Approval of Class and Collective Action Settlements,” which was featured in the American Bar Association’s Journal of Labor and Employment Law. He received various awards and honors for his academic achievements, including a Merit Award in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and served as an editor for the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review.

Mr. Brooks graduated in 2005 with a B.A. in psychology from Emory University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 2008. Mr. Brooks is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the State of New York, the State of Delaware, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Southern District of New York, and the Eastern District of New York.

Mr. Brooks serves as a board member or fellow in numerous social justice and philanthropic organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, and Lawyers Without Borders, where he was among a group of judges and preeminent practitioners who traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to foster the Rule of Law and work with the Kenyan judiciary and bar on trial advocacy.

Mr. Brooks has been recognized as a Rising Star in the areas of Business Litigation, Securities Litigation, and Employment & Labor Law by Pennsylvania Super Lawyers.

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Demanding more impact from impact litigation: lessons to be learned from multi-state opioid settlements

By Reuben Guttman and Liza Vertinsky, July 25, 2022

In the 1990s, state Attorneys General learned how to leverage their resources when they retained private counsel to sue the tobacco industry. The private attorneys worked on contingency, meaning they did not get paid unless money was recovered from the tobacco industry. For their part, the states were able to take on novel litigation and draw from private investments in legal innovation without putting taxpayer dollars at risk.

Since the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement was signed in 1998, state Attorneys General have worked with private counsel in similar relationships to bring an array of health, safety, and environmental suits focused on health impacts. These suits have included cases against drug companies, the most notorious of which featured opioid manufacturers and distributors.

In July 2022, 52 states and territories, along with many local governments, entered into a $26 billion multijurisdictional agreement with three major pharmaceutical distributors and a pharmaceutical manufacturer to settle claims arising from their opioid business practices. This multistate opioid settlement followed earlier ones reached with the now-infamous Purdue Pharma, as well as with McKinsey Consulting, Mallinckrodt, and Insys Therapeutics, and was followed by settlements with two more opioid manufacturers. The result was a multi-state enforcement effort by Attorneys General that is the second largest in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

While the state Attorneys General who participated in these suits and settlements were quick to herald them as a major success, with more than $30 billion in settlement funds and future monitoring and restricting future opioid deliveries, it is a stretch to say these are industry-changing events. Too little was done to educate policymakers and the public about the nature and sources of industry misconduct and to address the remaining vulnerabilities in the pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution system. The results did too little to change the market ecosystem that fueled the epidemic.

The opioid litigation, like many cases brought against pharmaceutical and device companies, challenged marketing practices that have caused products to be used in ways that place profits ahead of patients, often putting patients at risk of harm. These lawsuits exposed practices that have resulted in professional standards of care that seem to be influenced more by Wall Street promises than by medical necessity.

Yet far too often, these cases are resolved short of full fact finding — called discovery — or without a public trial and a published court decision. Multi-million-dollar opioid settlement resolutions are touted in press releases as major successes while the culprit corporations admit to nothing, simultaneously telling investors that the settlement was a business decision and will not affect the long-term bottom line. Indeed, history shows that when drug companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars — or even billions of dollars — to resolve claims of drug marketing derelictions, their price per share is not affected, or may even get a boost because investors believe the settlement was a cheap fee for a license to break the law.

As much as these cases have provided an inkling of the profit-motivated misconduct of companies that Americans depend on for health care and a safe environment, knowledge of the depth of corporate misconduct remains just that, an inkling. Confidentiality agreements — often executed to prevent delays in producing the documents required for civil litigation — keep the most sordid details secret. And when there is no trial, the public gets to learn little about identifying wrongful conduct and legislators have difficulty making laws that prevent it.

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote that sunshine is the best disinfectant. While recovering money for public programs is essential, state Attorneys General must do a better job of also making public the lessons learned from these opioid settlements. If the drug industry is using subtle marketing tactics to manipulate the prescribing habits of physicians, for example, the public — including legislators, regulators, the press, and even physicians — must know the details.

Impact litigation must be designed to effect changes in industry behavior. Just as the National Transportation Safety Board investigates and issues a public report when a train wreck occurs, and just as Environmental Impact Statements are required for federal projects that could significantly affect the quality of the human environment, state Attorneys General should treat corporate health and safety derelictions as deserving of detailed public reports. And they should make it clear to the attorneys involved — whether in-house or under contingency agreement — that confidentiality agreements cloaking the secrecy of wrongdoing are to be used only sparingly, to protect legitimate trade secrets that are not essential to reforming industry practices, and not to hide information that is important to the public.

In the end, the public needs to know all the facts and policymakers need to act on the facts. A simple press release announcing a seemingly high-dollar settlement doesn’t achieve either of those objectives.

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Reuben Guttman, a partner with Washington, D.C.-based Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, has litigated under the False Claims Act to challenge pharmaceutical marketing practices. Liza Vertinsky is a professor of law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Their article “Public-Private Litigation for Health” was published in the Utah Law Review.

Source: Article available on-line at Statnews.com.

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Webinar: Pretrial Advocacy

In Episode 22 of May the Record Reflect, Reuben Guttman and J.C. Lore discuss their new book, Pretrial Advocacy, and why modern litigation practices necessitate early, close attention from practitioners. They discuss the interplay of early discovery with the Federal Rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure, how law schools are responding to “front-loaded” litigation that often results in fewer jury trials, why public interest law matters, and what’s exciting about pretrial.  

This seminar addresses the following:

3:37  The meaning of front-loaded cases
6:16  Effects of Iqbal, Twombly, and Daubert on law practice and teaching advocacy
10:15 Pretrial advocacy at law school
12:14 Is pretrial exciting? 
16:56 Settlement versus trial
18:21 Why trials are still important
23:09 Getting to know the rules
29:07 Social media evidence
36:20 What’s lost with settlement
38:22 Public interest practice
41:03 Signature signoff question

To listen to this seminar or to learn more visit https://www.nita.org/s/product/22-pretrial-advocacy-with-reuben-guttman-and-jc-lore/01t4W00000DaKRW

Pretrial Advocacy is the ideal textbook for law school clinics, law school  pretrial litigation courses, and practicing lawyers. Both practical and theoretical, it teaches litigation as a process informed by rules and cases, but also by strategic considerations. Its hands-on and accessible text makes it a perfect reference for learning skills and a continuing reference. (Available in print and e-book here.)

Learn more here.

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Webinar: Litigating False Claims Act Cases

The False Act (FCA) is a statute allowing citizens to sue in the name of the government to recover monies owed because of fraud or “false claims.” FCA cases are filed under seal and not initially served on the Defendants; this gives government lawyers an opportunity to investigate the claims and determine whether to intervene and thus take responsibility for the action. In recent years there has been an expansive use of the statute and in many cases the government is leaving it to private counsel to pursue claims that are viable and substantial.

This seminar will address the following:

  • Investigating and preparing a case on the assumption it will be litigated
  • Pleadings issues that are germane to FCA cases
  • Addressing issues of materiality and presentment
  • Discovery and evidentiary concerns
  • The non-intervened government as a partner

To register or for more information visit https://www.nacle.com/CLE/Courses/Litigating-False-Claims-Act-Cases-1990