Guttman Buschner LLP

Staff

By

Rick Mountcastle

Rick MountcastleRick Mountcastle
Of Counsel

(202) 800-3001
rmountcastle@gbblegal.com

Practice Areas

Government Experience

Virginia Attorney General, Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, 2019-2022

United States Attorney (ret.), Western District of Virginia 2017-2018

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Virginia 1995-2018

Department of Justice, Tax Division, 1986-1994

Federal Railroad Administration, 1984-1986

Military Service

Active Duty, U.S. Army, 1980-1984, Captain, JAG Corps

Reserve Duty, U.S. Army Reserves, 1984-2008, Lieutenant Colonel (ret.), JAG Corps

Awards

Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for the Trial of Litigation, 1993

Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys Director’s Award-Abbott Labs Prosecution Team, 2013

DOJ Civil Division Special Commendation-Abbott Labs Prosecution Team, 2013

DOJ Civil Division Special Commendation-Small Smiles Prosecution Team, 2010

DOJ Civil Division Special Commendation-Purdue Prosecution Team, 2007

DOJ Tax Division, Assistant Attorney General’s Special Commendation, 1989

DOJ Tax Division, Outstanding Attorney, 1988

Education

George Washington University National Law Center

Marquette University

Admissions

United States District Court, Western District of Virginia

Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

Commonwealth of Virginia

By

Evidence Refresher: New & Overlooked Rules Every Litigator Should Know

Program Summary

Think you know the rules of evidence? Think again! This engaging CLE will cover recent changes, commonly misunderstood provisions, and overlooked evidentiary rules that could make or break your case. Whether you’re in the courtroom every day or just brushing up, this session will help you confidently navigate key evidentiary challenges. This program will be packed with what you need to gain stronger command of these critical evidence rules. Join us for this must-attend CLE and make sure your evidence game is courtroom-ready!

Key topics to be discussed:

  • Rule 106 – The Rule of completeness: When can you force the opposing party to introduce the rest of the story?
  • Rule 107 – Illustrative aids (a new rule!): How and when can you use visuals to support your case?
  • Rule 201 – Judicial notice: What facts can the court accept without traditional methods of proof, and how do you use this to your advantage?
  • Rule 615 – Sequestration: Who can you exclude from the courtroom and why might you want to?
  • Rule 807 – Residual exception to the hearsay rule: When can hearsay still come in, even when it doesn’t fit a Rule 803 or Rule 804 exception?
  • Rule 1002 – The best evidence rule: What’s really required when proving the contents of a document?
  • Rule 401- Relevance: What is really relevant and when is the rule being used to be backdoor in evidence for other purposes?
  • Rule 403- Probative value and unfair prejudice: What are some examples of unfair prejudice, confusion, or waste of time that might succeed in getting evidence excluded?
  • Rules 801 and 803- Hearsay: What are the common misconceptions about hearsay and exceptions everyone should consider using?
  • Rules 901 and 902- Authentication: How do issues relating to Artificial Intelligence play into the authentication of evidence?
  • Rule 1006- Summaries: When can you avoid dealing with the hassle of documents?

Date / Time: March 24, 2025 

  • 2:00 pm – 4:10 pm Eastern
  • 1:00 pm – 3:10 pm Central
  • 12:00 pm – 2:10 pm Mountain
  • 11:00 am – 1:10 pm Pacific

Agenda

I. Rule 106 – The Rule of completeness: When can you force the opposing party to introduce the rest of the story? | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

II. Rule 107 – Illustrative aids (a new rule!): How and when can you use visuals to support your case? | 2:10pm – 2:20pm

III. Rule 201 – Judicial notice: What facts can the court accept without traditional methods of proof, and how do you use this to your advantage? | 2:20pm – 2:30pm

IV. Rule 615 – Sequestration: Who can you exclude from the courtroom and why might you want to? | 2:30pm – 2:40pm

V. Rule 807 – Residual exception to the hearsay rule: When can hearsay still come in, even when it doesn’t fit a Rule 803 or Rule 804 exception? | 2:40pm – 2:50pm

VI. Rule 1002 – The best evidence rule: What’s really required when proving the contents of a document? | 2:50pm – 3:00pm

Break | 3:00pm – 3:10pm

VII. Rule 401- Relevance: What is really relevant and when is the rule being used to be backdoor in evidence for other purposes? | 3:10pm – 3:22pm

VIII. Rule 403- Probative value and unfair prejudice: What are some examples of unfair prejudice, confusion, or waste of time that might succeed in getting evidence excluded? | 3:22pm – 3:34pm

IX. Rules 801 and 803- Hearsay: What are the common misconceptions about hearsay and exceptions everyone should consider using? | 3:34pm – 3:46pm

X. Rules 901 and 902- Authentication: How do issues relating to Artificial Intelligence play into the authentication of evidence? | 3:46pm – 3:58pm

XI. Rule 1006- Summaries: When can you avoid dealing with the hassle of documents? | 3:58pm – 4:10pm

Speakers

Veronica J. Finkelstein | Wilmington University School of Law

Veronica J. Finkelstein combines the best of practice and teaching, devoting herself to developing the next generation of top advocates. She is both an experienced litigator and a skilled educator with diverse scholarly interests. Finkelstein spent a majority of her career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Philadelphia before transitioning to a fulltime teaching role at the Wilmington University School of Law.

At the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she served as the civil division training officer and paralegal supervisor before being selected as senior litigation counsel. Finkelstein handled various civil affirmative and defensive matters and criminal child exploitation cases. She tried numerous civil defensive cases to winning verdicts, including tort, employment law, and medical malpractice cases. She also successfully litigated cases on appeal.

In addition to this defensive work, Finkelstein investigated and prosecuted affirmative fraud claims, including qui tam actions. In 2014 she was awarded the Executive Office of United States Attorneys Director’s Award for Superior Performance as a Civil Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before joining the Department of Justice, Finkelstein clerked for the Honorable Jane Cutler Greenspan on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She also previously worked as a construction litigator at Duane Morris, LLP and Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall & Furman, PC.

A gifted teacher who regularly works with both lawyers and law students, Finkelstein has taught at the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center on ethics, appellate advocacy, legal writing, and trial practice. She frequently serves as a program director for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, where she teaches depositions, motion practice, trial advocacy, and legal writing programs. In 2024 she was awarded NITA’s Jo Ann Harris Public Service Award.

Prior to entering academia full time, Finkelstein served as adjunct faculty of law at Drexel Law, Emory Law, and Rutgers Law. She was awarded the Carl “Tobey” Oxholm III Outstanding Contribution to the Thomas R. Kline School of Law Community Award in 2021 and was named Rutgers Law School Adjunct Professor of the Year every year she taught at Rutgers Law.

Finkelstein’s scholarship is as diverse as her litigation and teaching experience. Her scholarship has addressed various topics, from evidence, to civil procedure, to constitutional law. Her essay “The Quest to Normalize Questments” was selected as the 2024 winner of Temple Law Review’s Edward D. Ohlbaum Paper in Advocacy.

She is also the co-author of the Professional Responsibility textbook “Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned,” which contextualizes the rules of professional conduct in realistic litigation settings. The textbook is now in its second edition.

Finkelstein graduated, with honors, from the Emory University School of Law. She was a highly competitive member of Emory Law’s moot court society and was selected for the Order of the Barristers. She received her undergraduate degrees, with honors, from the Pennsylvania State University.

Reuben Guttman | Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, PLLC

Reuben Guttman is a founding member of Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, PLLC where his practice involves civil rights, whistleblowers, class actions and complex litigation. The International Business Times has referred to him as “one of the world’s most prominent whistleblower attorneys.” Citing “wins recouping billions of dollars for the federal and state governments,” Boston Globe’s STAT News referred to him as the “The Lawyer Pharma Loves to Hate.”

Guttman has represented workers, unions, and pension funds in complex litigation. For over a decade, he has served as the chief outside counsel to the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers International Union, AFL-CIO/CLC, in a series of labor and environmental cases that enhanced safety and environmental conditions at Manhattan Project nuclear weapons sites while driving dread disease compensation legislation for nuclear weapons workers across the nation.

In 2020, he served as lead counsel in a federal class action lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Corrections and secured a consent order mandating Hepatitis C testing and treatment for 17,000 inmates.

Guttman is currently a faculty member of the American University School of Public Affairs where he teaches Equal Protection/Civil Rights, and he has been an Adjunct Professor at Emory Law School and a Senior Fellow at Emory Law’s Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. He is a Founder and Senior Advisor to the Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review (ECGAR). He is the 2015 recipient of the Emory Law Alumni Service Award.

He has taught trial advocacy and complex case investigations in the United States, China, and Mexico, and he has co-authored three case files – two published by Emory Law and one published by the National Institute of Trial Advocacy where he is a faculty member.

He is co-author (with J.C. Lore III of Rutgers Law) of the textbook, Pretrial Advocacy (Wolters Kluwer Spring, 2021). He is a chapter co author (with Traci Buschner) and wrote the introduction for Remote Advocacy: A Guide to Survive and Thrive (Wolters Kluwer and National Institute of Trial Advocacy, 2020).

Guttman has written or co-authored more than 100 articles or opinion pieces and multiple book chapters and law review pieces. He is a monthly columnist for Law360 where he writes on litigation and politics. His article, Pharmaceutical Regulation in the United States; a Confluence of Influences, wastranslated and published in Mandarin in the Peking University Public Interest Law Journal, Vol 1, Page 187 (2010).

Guttman is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; he is past member of the Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society (ACS) where he is currently a member of the ACS Board of Advisors. Guttman received his JD from Emory University and his BA in American History from the University of Rochester. He is the founder of www.whistleblowerlaws.com. He began his legal career as a Washington, DC counsel for the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, where he served for five years.

To register, to learn about CLE and more visit https://mylawcle.com/products/evidence-refresher-new-overlooked-rules-every-litigator-should-know/

By

What to DOGE about Fraud, Waste, and Abuse?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the headlines. “Department of Defense pays $32,000 to replace 25 coffee cups.” “Boeing overcharges Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers.” While there is much room for debate as to whether DOGE – as currently constituted – is the right watch dog, and whether Inspectors General should have an oversight role, these allegations are alarming. Yet, they are not surprising. Fraud on a busy and complacent government is nothing new.

The original False Claims Act – also known as Lincoln’s Law – was enacted in 1863 in response to rampant fraud encountered by the Union Army in connection with its procurement of military equipment and supplies. For example, it was common for the military contractors of the day to fill munitions with sawdust instead of proper explosives to reap huge windfalls under their contracts.1 Lincoln’s Law, which initially had a robust qui tam provision to incentivize company insiders to come forward with fraud and share in the resultant government recovery following a lawsuit, significantly reduced such fraud. But fast forward to the 1980s, by which time the qui tam provisions had been weakened substantially, abuse was on the rise.

As the military-industrial complex grew, reports of flagrant abuses permeated the halls of Congress. Contractors to the United States Navy were especially abusive, charging the Navy $7,000 for coffee pots, $660 for ashtrays, $16,571 for a three-cubic-foot refrigerator, $400 for socket wrenches and hammers, and $640 for aircraft toilet seats.2 The Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Air Force all raised complaints of profit-gouging by the defense industries.3 In the wake of such exorbitant charges, the False Claims Act was substantially strengthened in 1986, including its qui tam provisions to incentivize reporting of fraud by company insiders.

To the extent outrageous mark-ups continue to be seen, it is clear that more must be done. Either by statutory law (i.e. Medicaid) or contract, many government contracts already have “most favored customer” or “best price” clauses. For example, a contractor that that sells goods to the Department of Defense must treat the Government as the “most favored customer” and provide it with the contractor’s best pricing.4

Questions remain as to whether these clauses appear only in products essential to the Department’s mission or also appear in contracts for ordinary goods that any business needs. Investigations must take place to determine how compliance with such provisions is assessed during and after the contracting process. While the False Claims Act plays a critical role, it is a tool to pair with Government diligence in contacting. Possible contracting requirements could have government contractors provide the terms of their most favored private sector contracts annually to the government and require that government officials entering into contracts affirmatively certify – on an annual basis – that they have determined that products are being provided at reasonable costs commensurate with all contract provisions.

_______________________

1. First Session on § 1562 A Bill to Amend the False Claims Act, and Title 18 of the United States Code Regarding Penalties For False Claims And For Other Purposes, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of the Committee of the Judiciary of the United States Senate, 99th Congress (1985) (Statement by Sen. Charles Grassley); see also https://kkc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/FCA-hear-j-99-52-1985.pdf

2. 131 Cong. Rec. 17818 (1985); Bill Keller, Navy Pays $660 Apiece for Two Ashtrays, N.Y. TIMES, May 29, 1985, at A-14; Fred Hiatt, Now, the $600 Toilet Seat, WASHINGTON POST, Feb. 5, 1985, at A5.

3. Richard Halloran, Contractor Penalties Harsher, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 29, 1985, at D4; Navy Investigating Bills for $660 Ashtrays, $400 Wrenches, ASSOCIATED PRESS NEWS ARCHIVE (May 28, 1985); see also NAVY RELIEVES 3 OF DUTY OVER $659 ASHTRAYS, available at https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/31/us/navy-relieves-3-of-duty-over-659-ashtrays.html.

4. Government Contractor Pays $4 Million to Resolve Pricing and Sourcing Allegations Brought Under the False Claims Act | GSA Office of Inspector General, available at https://www.gsaig.gov/news/government-contractor-pays-4-million-resolve-pricing-and-sourcing-allegations-brought-under

By

What the judicial branch can do when a president refuses to comply with a court order

NPR speaks with retired federal judge Nancy Gertner about how the judicial branch could, or could not, enforce a court order against a sitting president who refuses to comply.

Click here to listen to the interview with Judge Nancy Getner (Ret.) for more information.

Excerpt:

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

A federal judge in Rhode Island says the White House has defied an order to unfreeze federal grant and program funds and is ordering the administration to immediately end any federal funding pause. And this case is just one of dozens of lawsuits that have been filed to try to block some of President Trump’s many executive actions that are pushing legal limits. But what if the Trump administration just ignores court rulings?

* * *

GERTNER: Well, the – a court – a judge has tools available to him or her in the first instance. You know, they can cite the parties in front of them for contempt. They can impose fines. Of course, since one of the parties, arguably, here is Elon Musk, it’s not clear that fines are going to make a particle of difference. There’s even the possibility of imprisoning someone until the order is followed. All of these are, obviously, empty threats with respect to the defendants in this case. The marshals would have to enforce whatever orders the judge entered. The problem is that the Marshals Service is under the Department of Justice, and if Trump wanted to fully not comply, he could direct the Department of Justice not to comply. At that point, you have a full unconstitutional crisis. You have one branch of the government ignoring the legitimate comments – the legitimate orders, rather, of another branch.

Let me also say the other thing available to the – to Trump, if he doesn’t agree with the judge, is to appeal. And so to some degree, hastening a constitutional crisis says something about what he’s trying to do, which is more about showing his power than it is about following the law.

* * *

The question is whether or not Trump is exercising power in a legitimate way. And when he violates the Administrative Procedure Act, which says that you can change regulations only if you follow certain procedures, when he violates the Privacy Act, threatening to release the names of the FBI agents who arguably participated in January 6, when he holds up the funding of programs that have been appropriated by Congress – that’s the question of whether or not he’s acting in a legitimate fashion. And these cases are essentially saying there’s nothing remotely legitimate about what the president is doing under these circumstances.

I can’t say – I can’t emphasize enough how difficult it is for a judge to enter a temporary restraining order, which is the case in these cases. You have to find the likelihood of success on the merits, and you have to find irreparable harm. And the bar is high. It says something about how far Trump has gone from what the legitimate lawmaking function is in these cases that judges are doing this.

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Read full transcipt here.