GB Attorneys: Helping Whistleblowers Make An Impact; nearly $6 Billion Recovered.
Over the past five years alone, the attorneys at GB have worked with whistleblowers in cases resulting in the return of nearly $6 billion to federal and state governments. GB attorneys have worked with their whistleblower clients to secure recoveries against the largest pharmaceutical companies, major energy companies, health care providers, and defense contractors. Firm counsel have litigated under Federal and State False Claims Acts and have brought cases under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower programs.
In July 2017, in one of the most heavily litigated cases under the False Claims Act, GB settled with Pharmaceutical bio-tech, Celgene, on the eve of trial for $280 million. The case was pursued absent government intervention and marked one of the largest recoveries in a non-intervened False Claims Act case. A link to the Court’s Opinion denying summary judgement is here.
As a boutique high impact firm, GB brings a unique blend of expertise to its cases. Reuben Guttman and Traci Buschner have been lead or co-lead counsel for whistleblowers in some of the most significant cases brought under Federal and State False Claims Acts including US ex Rel McCoyd v. Abbott Labs ($1.6 Billion recovered for the government); US ex Rel Graydon v. GSK ($1.2 Billion recovered); US ex Rel DeMott v. Pfizer ($2.3 Billon recovered); US ex Rel Kurnik v. Amgen ($24 million recovered); US ex Rel Bunk v. Birkhart ($12 million recovered); US ex Rel Dogramji v. CHS ($98 million recovered); US ex Rel Szymoniak v. DocX ($98 million recovered from five banks as part of Government’s $25 Billion banking settlement); US ex Rel Kurnik v. Omnicare ($4.9 million recovered). Justin Brooks worked for over five years at two of the country’s most prominent international law firms, representing Fortune 100 companies in complex commercial litigation and single-plaintiff and class action litigation involving issues of unpaid wages and discrimination. He now puts his considerable experience to use on behalf of whistleblowers in qui tam actions, institutional investors, and employees whose employers have wrongfully withheld wages, or have discriminated against them in violation of the law.
For its health care cases, the firm relies on the guidance of Dr. Caroline Poplin, the firm’s Medical Director and Of Counsel. A graduate of the University of Rochester Medical School who served on the faculty of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences during her tenure as a physician at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Dr. Poplin also received a law degree from Yale Law School and practiced as an Attorney with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Poplin has active medical licenses in Maryland and Virginia. She is a member of the DC Bar.
Co-author of one of the seminal books on government contracts, The Shadow Government (Pantheon 1976), the Firm’s Of Counsel Dan Guttman has been one of the leading experts on the government’s use of private contractors. He has been counsel to United States Senate oversight committees investigating government contracts, was special counsel in US Senate oversight investigation of US government contracting, shared in an investigative journalism award for a study of $900 billion in Pentagon contracting, and is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governance studies, where he has taught courses in the contracting out of the US government. He served as Executive Direct of President Clinton’s Advisory Commission on Human Radiation and was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a Commissioner of the United States Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. He has been a partner in a law firm (Spiegel and McDiarmid) that pioneered in the application of the antitrust law to the electric utility industry He was a Fulbright scholar in China and is a professor at New York University Shanghai, visiting Professor at the Peking University Law school law clinic, and fellow of the Tsinghua University China/US Center. He is a fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration.
