In October 2022, my former firm, Greene LLP, was named “Lawyers of the Year” by Taxpayers Against Fraud, the premier organization for whistleblower lawyers, for our work achieving a $900 million settlement on the eve of trial in a kickback lawsuit brought against Biogen by our client, Michael Bawduniak. The citation for the award is here. My role in this epic litigation was to find and maintain command of, the best evidence for fraud in 1.5 million documents produced by all parties. I also worked with experts to enable estimates of the amount of money that the government had spent on prescriptions written by bribed doctors.
Biogen settled the case the day after a key hearing, with trial set to open a few days later. One of several topics discussed in the hearing was whether Biogen’s lawyers should be allowed to present the jury with complicated calculations and testimony supposedly proving that its payments to doctors did not have any effect on their prescribing. Putting aside whether the analyses were reliable, the judge expressed the view in the hearing that they were irrelevant. If a company intends to bribe doctors by making payments, the government would not cover their subsequent prescriptions, even if the doctors might have written them anyway.