Outcome: $2.5 billion settlement | hundreds of millions in whistleblower awards
Tycko & Zavareei LLP partner Renée Brooker, during her time working for the United States Department of Justice, spent five years litigating the Average Wholesale Price Multidistrict Litigation Proceeding (AWP-MDL) and received the Attorney General’s Highest Award for Fraud Prevention for sizeable recoveries. The AWP-MDL involved allegations against many major pharmaceutical companies for a scheme to report false and fraudulent inflated prices for numerous drug products knowing that the Medicare and Medicaid programs relied on those prices to set payment rates. The AWP-MDL was hailed as a successful public-private partnership between the Department of Justice, state Attorneys General, and private counsel representing whistleblowers. Overall, the cases against the pharmaceutical manufacturers resulted in over $2.5 billion in Medicare and Medicaid recoveries. The whistleblowers who brought the violations to the Justice Department’s attention included a physician, registered nurse, pharmacist, insurance biller, and the principals of a home drug infusion health care provider