Janet L. Goldstein

Janet L. Goldstein began representing whistleblowers in 1989, three years after Congress revived the False Claims Act. The Civil War-era statute allowed private citizens to bring claims on the government’s behalf; the 1986 amendments strengthened their role and increased their incentives to report fraud. Goldstein became a founding partner of Phillips, Cohen & Goldstein, now Phillips & Cohen, and later continued the practice at Vogel, Slade & Goldstein in Washington.

She had spent the preceding ten years prosecuting cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles: government-contractor fraud, financial fraud, political corruption, racketeering, and environmental crimes. That service earned her a Justice Department Special Achievement Award, a Treasury Department Director’s Award, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Bronze Medal. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis and cum laude from Harvard Law School, and has tried more than fifty jury cases in federal and state courts.

The Phillips, Cohen & Goldstein team’s early campaigns against contractor and health-care fraud became the subject of Giantkillers, published by Atlantic Monthly Press, whose subtitle described helping whistleblowers recover America’s stolen billions. In Goldstein’s later cases, the question of what induced a government payment would take her into software maintenance agreements, estimates for survey work, pharmacy discounts, and the decisions made in hospital emergency rooms.

Renewals and Estimates

Goldstein represented Ann-Marie Shaw, a former CA Technologies technical sales specialist, in a case about government customers being charged for software services they had already bought. Maintenance contracts entitled agencies to upgrades and technical assistance for a specified period. When CA processed a renewal before that period ended, it started the new term immediately, producing overlapping charges. The case also concerned Defense Department customers steered away from prepaid software inventory and toward more costly purchases.

Working with her partners and Phillips & Cohen, Goldstein helped Shaw pursue claims that produced an $11 million settlement in 2013: $8 million for the federal government and $3 million for state and local governments. The billing arrangements connected customers of very different sizes. Goldstein described the affected agencies as “ranging from local libraries to the Defense Department.”

At Gallup, the disputed figures were estimates of the labor needed for government work. Goldstein represented Michael Lindley, the polling organization’s former director of client services, with her firm and Katz, Marshall & Banks. His case alleged that Gallup’s proposals to the State Department and U.S. Mint overstated its own expected labor hours, increasing the prices of contracts awarded without competition. Internal budgets projecting lower costs supplied a way to test what the government had been told.

Lindley had raised concerns inside Gallup. His lawsuit brought the allegations into a government investigation and a $10.5 million settlement in July 2013; he received approximately $1.9 million as his share. Later that year, Taxpayers Against Fraud named Goldstein and her partners Robert Vogel and Shelley Slade Whistleblower Lawyers of the Year for their work in the Gallup and Pfizer cases.

Goldstein continues to investigate software licenses, labor categories, contract pricing, and representations about a contractor’s performance. Each industry has its own terms. Her work with these clients connects their knowledge of the business to evidence of what the government was told, what the company knew, and what was paid.

Payments Behind Medical Decisions

The Novartis litigation concerned the financial arrangements behind pharmacy recommendations. Goldstein and her partners, working with Susman Godfrey, represented former Novartis sales manager David Kester. The case challenged rebates and discounts used to induce specialty pharmacies to promote refills of Novartis drugs. The alleged kickbacks went to the pharmacies dispensing the medicine, rather than to prescribing doctors.

Novartis resolved the government’s claims in November 2015 for $390 million, comprising $370 million in civil settlement payments and $20 million in forfeiture. Related settlements with the specialty pharmacies Accredo and BioScrip had already produced $60 million and $15 million. The resolutions reached both the manufacturer offering the incentives and pharmacies whose conduct the incentives were intended to influence.

In the EmCare case, Goldstein’s clients knew the relationship between a hospital chain and the company staffing its emergency rooms. Jacqueline Meyer had managed EmCare’s contracts with twenty Health Management Associates hospitals. Michael Cowling had been an HMA division vice-president and chief executive at three of its hospitals. They alleged that HMA paid EmCare to press emergency-room doctors to admit patients who could be treated and released or cared for as outpatients. Physician bonuses and the prospect of retaining or winning hospital contracts were alleged means of increasing admissions, which generated higher Medicare payments.

Goldstein and her co-counsel at Wyche filed the clients’ lawsuit under seal in South Carolina in July 2011. It named HMA’s then-chief executive, Gary Newsome, as well as the companies. When the Justice Department joined the claims against HMA and Newsome in 2014, Goldstein explained the choice to pursue an individual’s responsibility: “We must put names and faces to the alleged perpetrators and seek to hold these individuals accountable in a court of law.”

Six years after the filing, EmCare agreed in December 2017 to pay nearly $30 million to resolve the allegations against it in this and a related whistleblower action. Meyer and Cowling shared in the $6.2 million relators’ award; Meyer also separately settled retaliation claims arising from the loss of her job. The case connected business and compensation decisions to the admission of patients and the resulting claims on public health programs.

Teaching the Decisions

Goldstein has served as national co-chair of the qui tam subcommittee of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. She has been guest faculty in Harvard Law School’s trial advocacy program, at the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and at the University of Southern California’s law school. Her speaking engagements have included the ABA’s False Claims Act Institute, the Health Care Compliance Association, and the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units.

Goldstein has said that her clients’ sense of right and wrong gives her energy. Their cases can spend years under seal while the government investigates. At a 2013 National Employment Lawyers Association conference, she taught the practical choices involved in representing them: recognizing a viable claim, encouraging Justice Department intervention, answering jurisdictional challenges, and selecting the district in which to sue.