2012 Roundtable Series: False Claims
U.S. federal and state government attorneys, along with an active plaintiffs’ bar, continue to push the boundaries of the False Claims Act as applied to companies that do high-volume business with the government, particularly in the health care field. Fred Herold, managing partner of Dechert’s Silicon Valley office, recently participated in a roundtable discussion on this issue that was sponsored by The California Lawyer. The panel debated how the False Claims Act has been applied in complex disputes involving government payments, as well as the implications of several recent settlements of False Claims Act cases against clinical laboratories in California, in which Mr. Herold was counsel for the lead defendant, the largest provider of clinical laboratory testing services in the United States.
In a lively and sometimes pointed debate, Mr. Herold challenged the view that a significant qui tam settlement implies misconduct, criticized the use of the False Claims Act as a way to enforce often ambiguous regulations and recommended reforms for the statute and how it is administered.
