Watch this video of Reuben Guttman discussing Compulsory Arbitration at Emory Law School.
Blocking the FDA
Forks, orthodontic braces, hip-joint replacements-all made with radioactive metals. That’s what could have happened in the late 1990s as a result of the Department of Energy’s agreement with BNFL Inc. to recycle as much as I 10,000 tons of contaminated metal taken from the Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear weapons facility.
This did not sit well with Guttman, a Washington, D.C.based attorney who filed suit against Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to block the recycling and distribution of these metals.
“I learned about the National Environmental Policy Act in Professor Arthur’s course on environmental law and knew that this was a federal action, which could have potential impact on health or the environment,” he says.
“This would mandate an environmental impact statement.” In pursuing the case, Guttman searched through copious documents for an environmental impact statement or a decision against assembling one. Neither could be found.
“I filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the secretary of energy,” he says. “When I sought discovery in the case, the Department of Justice, representing the Department of Energy, argued that this was an action under the Administrative Procedures Act and therefore, while I was entitled to a record, I was not entitled to discovery.”
Guttman argued successfully that because the government had failed to develop a record, he was entitled to the discovery necessary to develop one. He took depositions, including one from the assistant secretary of energy, and secured documents.
“The judge ultimately found that the entire project was troublesome. A public interest group took out a quarterpage ad in The New York Times quoting the judge,” Guttman says. “There was even a ‘Boondocks’ comic on
the subject of the case.”
The secretary of energy canceled the project. Now director at Grant & Eisenhofer in D.C., Guttman heads the firm’s whistle-blower practice. He has served as counsel in some of the largest recoveries under the Federal False Claims Act, including U.S. ex rel. Johnson v. Shell Oil Co., 33 F. Supp. 2d 528 (ED Tex. 1999), which recovered more than $300 million from the oil industry. He also represented one of the six main whistle-blowers who said Pfizer Inc. tried to entice doctors to promote and prescribe drugs for unapproved uses. Pfizer settled in 2009 for $2.3 billion.
Even before filing a case, Guttman’s team engages in intense investigation, retains experts and prepares as if a trial is imminent.
“We look at the case from all sides. We look at good facts and bad facts. We assume the court will see the entirety of the case,” Guttman says in an article, “Frontloading the Case: Theme & Theory in False Claims and Fraud Litigation.” “We develop theories for the case and a theme, which allows the decider of fact to ‘get it.”
Guttman also uses social media and other web-based resources to enhance his work. To that end, he founded whistleblowerlaws.com, which provides information about “qui tam” lawsuits that allow whistleblowers to seek damages on behalf of the government. He has a Listserv of more than 200 lawyers who share information about whistle-blower and civil rights cases. He also biogs for The Global Legal Post and uses Twitter and YouTube. Though his practice focuses on the most complicated of cases, Guttman can boil it all down to the simple idea that first piqued his interest in the field: Complex litigation can help people.
“The ability to try a case in court levels the playing field for those without power or resources to vindicate their rights,” he says.
Source: Emory Lawyer | Spring 2013
YEAR OF THE WHISTLEBLOWER?
Whistleblowers and the people and organisations that support them have been making waves and making news for decades. Finally, they’re making laws.
Over the past two years, many countries throughout the world have passed new or strengthened existing laws to protect whistleblowers from retaliation, and to help ensure that their efforts to disclosure corruption, fraud and other crimes result in needed reforms.
From Luxembourg to Vietnam, from South Korea to the US, and from Peru to Jamaica, countries in all regions of the world are granting new and expanded legal protections to people who expose a wide range of crimes. In many more countries – Australia, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Taiwan, to name just a few – new or improved whistleblower protection laws are actively under consideration or being proposed.
The latest major breakthrough came in November, when US President Barack Obama signed into law the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which will provide new legal shields for federal employees – including protection for government scientists who challenge censorship, and for employees who challenge the consequences of the government’s policy decisions.
Thirteen years in the making, this victory was pushed over the top thanks to an extraordinary grassroots campaign by the Government Accountability Project, the Project on Government Oversight and the public radio programme “On the Media”.
And, last month, the European Commission – acknowledging input from TI and our friends at Public Concern at Work – passed new whistleblower guidelines for EU staff members, including a critical provision that requires managers to prove that any actions taken against employees were not motivated by whistleblowing.
Why are whistleblower protection laws important? Without them, citizens can be fired, suspended, harassed or otherwise retaliated against for exposing wrongdoing. In extreme cases, they and their family members are threatened, beaten or even killed – as in the case of an Indian whistleblower named Lingaraju, who was hacked to death in front of his wife while they were fetching water near their home on November 20.
Why are whistleblowers important? Worldwide, they have saved millions of lives, helped to recover billions of dollars in stolen and lost funds, saved precious environmental resources, and exposed all manner of cases of corruption, tax evasion, financial crimes and human rights violations gone undetected or ignored by official authorities.
According to a 2012 survey by Ernst & Young, 40 percent of respondents worldwide identified whistleblowing as a highly effective tool for detecting wrongdoing. According to KPMG India, nearly 30 percent of all fraud detected in the country has surfaced due to the anonymous whistleblower.
The oldest whistleblower law in the world – the US False Claims Act – has been credited with securing tens of billions of dollars in fines and stolen funds. An all-time record $4.9 billion in settlements and judgments was secured by the US Justice Department in 2012 under a whistleblower law that allows citizens to expose corruption and bring it to the attention of federal investigators. The figure topped the previous record by more than $1.7 billion, and brings total recoveries under the False Claims Act since 2009 to $13.3 billion – the largest four-year total in history, and more than a third of total recoveries since the law was amended in 1986.
These huge successes led Reuben Guttman, one of the top whistleblower attorneys in the US, to proclaim, “2012 can be looked upon as the year of the whistleblower.”
The international whistleblower movement is now at the point of no return. Activists around the world are demanding legal rights and protections for whistleblowers – and they’re winning in record numbers. As these protections expand, whistleblowers will have greater assurances that if they come forward and report wrongdoing, they will not suffer the consequence of committing the truth.
Reuben Guttman on Privatization Panel for American Constitution Society 2014 Convention
Watch this video of Reuben Guttman in a panel discussion at the American Constitution Society’s 2014 Convention as it explored the question of whether rights are violated by the shift of inherently governmental functions to the private sector.
Interview with Reuben Guttman on $1.6 Billion Abbott settlement
Watch an interview with Reuben Guttman regarding the 1.6 Billion settlement in the case U.S. ex rel. McCoyd v. Abbott Laboratories.
