PITTSBURGH, PA – Pamela Coyle Brecht, partner at the law firm Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP, will present at the American Conference Institute’s 3rd Advanced Forum on False Claims & Qui Tam Enforcement on January 21-22, 2016. She will speak on the “Best Practices to Facilitate Global Settlements.”
The two-day event takes place at the Doubletree Suites by Hilton Times Square in New York, NY. Now in its third successful year, the forum has been developed for in-house counsel, chief compliance officers and private practitioners to discuss the latest developments in this practice. Leading industry decision makers will provide practical tips for investing, defending and settling these cases.
Ms. Brecht is an active member of the Qui Tam Practice Group, with experience also in employment law, white collar criminal litigation, and labor relations. She has been or is currently involved in litigating some of the most complex Qui Tam cases filed in the United States. Her cases have included alleged fraud by a large multi-state Medicaid managed care contractor, FCA violations by three of the largest hospital corporations in the country, and complex financial relationships among healthcare providers, as well as pharmaceutical fraud. She is also part of the team that is advancing one of the first national cases alleging fraud against the Medicare Part D program.
Ms. Brecht is a 1988, cum laude, graduate of Villanova University and a 1991 graduate of Temple University School of Law. She was a competitive Rower on The Villanova Women’s Crew Team. While attending Temple University School of Law, Ms. Brecht served as a member of the Temple Law Review, was on the Dean’s List, and received honors for Distinguished Class Performance. Ms. Brecht is a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association, the American Health Lawyers Association, the Health Care Compliance Association, the Federal Bar Association Qui Tam Section, the Brehon Law Society, and the Justinian Law Society. Read More
Articles in this Issue:
1) A Mechanic’s Lien in Search of an Owner
2) Temporary Construction Workers May be Considered Employees Under Title IX and the PHRA
3) The Changing Landscape of Fiduciary Liability and Increased Risk of Liability for Companie and Their Officers
4) 10 Terrifying Questions for 401(k) Plan Sponsors
5) McKees Rocks Redux
6) Design Professionals Beware/Pennsylvania Appellate Courts Construing Bilt-Rite Case
7) Debunking the Myth of the Passive Job Candidate
Related Information:
construction_legal_edge,_winter_2015.pdf Read More
Click Here for Class Action Settlement Website to File Claim or Get More Information
Click Here for Class Action Settlement Detailed Notice
Rougvie, et. al. v. Ascena Retail Group, et. al., 2:15-cv-00724 (E.D. Pa.)
Related Information:
Class Action Settlement Detailed Notice Read More
PHILADELPHIA, PA – Gaetan J. Alfano, a partner with Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP, will lead the Philadelphia Bar Association in 2016 as its 89th Chancellor.
Mr. Alfano served as the 2015 Chancellor-Elect for the Philadelphia Bar Association and is a member of the Justinian Society, holding a number of offices including Treasurer. For 10 years, Mr. Alfano served as the Vice Chair, the highest Pennsylvania position, of the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, a bi-state agency. He was appointed to this position in the agency by both former Governors Edward G. Rendell and Tom Corbett.
Mr. Alfano served as Assistant District Attorney for 5 years under then District Attorney Rendell. He has served as a Senior Member of the hearing committee of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. In 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court appointed Mr. Alfano to serve on the Board of Law Examiners.
Mr. Alfano currently serves as Co-Chair of the Litigation Practice Group and is a member in the Employment & Labor Practice Group at Pietragallo. He is consistently recognized as a top commercial litigator by his peers. Mr. Alfano has extensive trial and appellate experience in commercial and employment disputes, insurance insolvency and receivership law, as well as complex white collar criminal defense.
The Philadelphia Bar Association was founded in 1802 and is America’s first chartered metropolitan bar association. It was originally formed by a small group of Philadelphia lawyers who gathered together to share law books and professional resources. Over the years its members have included some of the nation’s most prominent lawyers, judges, public servants, business, civic and community leaders. Today the Philadelphia Bar Association counts 13,000 members including the Mayor of Philadelphia and the Governor of Pennsylvania. With a strong sense of social responsibility and community purpose the Bar Association funds numerous law-related public interest programs through its charitable arm, the Philadelphia Bar Foundation. Read More
Personal injury plaintiffs typically enter into contingent fee agreements and many may change attorneys before recovering any funds. Despite this dynamic, there is little guidance on the circumstances under which a successor firm must share a contingent fee with a predecessor firm that was terminated before the contingency occurred. Last term, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard arguments in Meyer Darragh Buckler Bebenek&Eck v. Malone Middleman, 8 WAP 2015, a dispute over a contingent fee where the client was originally represented by Meyer Darragh but elected to be represented by Malone Middleman, which later settled the case. A decision in the case should resolve several questions concerning fee sharing, including whether a former firm, which did not secure a recovery, is limited to a quantum meruit recovery and if so, whether a quantum meruit recovery lies against the successor firm as opposed to the client.
BACKGROUND
The underlying facts are less than straightforward. In October, 2002, Richard Eazor died in a motor vehicle accident. In March, 2005, attorney William Weiler, Jr. began representing the Eazor estate in a wrongful death action pursuant to a contingent fee agreement with the Estate. Later that year, Weiler signed an employment agreement with Meyer Darragh in which he agreed that fees for legal services on behalf of his clients would be the property of Meyer Darragh. Importantly, Meyer Darragh did not enter into its own contingent fee agreement with the Eazor estate.
Weiler resigned from Meyer Darragh almost two years later. Before leaving, Weiler amended his employment agreement to provide that Meyer Darragh would receive two-thirds and Weiler would receive one-third of any fees recovered in the Eazor case. Meyer Darragh continued to represent the estate.
Weiler next affiliated with Malone Middleman and the Eazor estate chose to be represented by Mr. Weiler and the new firm. Read More
Pamela C. Brecht will speak about current events at the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Litigation Healthcare LA Regional Conference. Michael A. Morse will present on “Complexities of Parallel Proceeding Under the False Claims Act.” Read More
The proliferation of sleep medicine specialty services in recent years has not gone unnoticed by the federal government. As sleep specialists pursue innovation in both diagnoses and therapies, the likelihood of challenges in submitting charges for those services has increased. Data published by the government illustrates the magnitude of the charges being submitted in the sleep medicine practice area in recent years. One study found that from January 1, 2011 through September 30, 2012, Medicare administrative contractors (MACs) nationwide paid approximately $680 million for a type of sleep study known as polysomnography.
Polysomnography is used to diagnose a variety of sleep disorders, most commonly obstructive sleep apnea, and to evaluate a patient’s response to therapy. Polysomnography employs numerous techniques and technologies to record a sleeping patient’s brain waves, blood oxygen level, heart rate and breathing, as well as eye and leg movements. The services are typically provided at sleep disorder clinics, which may be either free standing independent diagnostic testing facilities (IDTF) or facilities affiliated with a hospital.
While the use of polysomnography for treatment of sleep disorders has gained wide acceptance, periodic government reviews and audits of polysomnography services have found that Medicare has paid for services not meeting Medicare requirements. The issues noted in those reviews included inappropriate diagnosis codes, providers that exhibited patterns of questionable billing, and payments for services without the required supporting documents. Of particular note, in January of 2013, a provider agreed to pay $15.3 million to settle allegations of false sleep study claims billed to Medicare and other federal payors.
As a result of these mounting concerns, HHS/OIG has continued to audit providers of polysomnography. One recent example is the review by OIG’s Office of Audit Services (OAS) of Total Sleep Management, Inc. (Total Sleep), which operates as an IDTF in Orlando, Florida. In the audit, OAS reviewed Total Sleep’s claims for polysomnography for the period of January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2012. Read More
DOJ made news recently with its announcement that it would be placing special emphasis in the course of investigating and prosecuting business organizations on making individuals accountable. While most observers agree it is too early to assess the full impact of the policy shift articulated in the September 9 Yates Memo, it appears that timely and comprehensive response by company executive management to reports of fraudulent conduct will remain a key consideration for government prosecutors when making charging decisions.
Not long after the Yates Memo was published, Assistant Attorney General, Leslie Caldwell made public remarks where she emphasized that the Yates Memo was actually quite consistent with the way the department had been approaching corporate wrongdoing for some time. She also acknowledged, however, that the policy shift does forcefully focus all federal prosecutors on pursuing individual accountability. In that regard, she added that “prosecuting the corporate entity, and imposing a fine for other impersonal conditions, simply is not enough – in most instances – to fully punish and, more importantly, deter corporate misconduct.” She went on to provide examples of cases resolved in the months leading up to the publication of the Yates Memo that demonstrated how the department addresses matters where companies cooperate.
The examples cited by Assistant Attorney General Caldwell in her remarks affirmed the relatively long-held axiom that when corporations act quickly on the first notice of wrong-doing within their organization, and follow it up with a credible internal investigation and disclosure to the government, the corporation can significantly reduce the likelihood of prosecution. That certainly appears to have been the way it played out in DOJ’s investigation of accounting fraud at commercial sanitation services provider, Swisher Hygiene, where the company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), and three individual Swisher employees were charged in the District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Read More
