Suzanne E. Durrell

In January 2000, the United States announced a $486 million resolution with National Medical Care and its parent Fresenius, then the largest health-care fraud settlement in American history. Suzanne E. Durrell was the government's lead civil attorney. Five whistleblower cases had contributed to an investigation of the dialysis company's laboratory billing and payments to induce referrals. The resolution combined civil payments with criminal penalties and required the company to submit to audits and report its compliance with government health-care rules.

Durrell's work involved evaluating the relators' information, helping decide which claims the government would pursue, calculating its losses, and coordinating civil releases with criminal pleas. As chief of the Civil Division of the United States Attorney's Office in Boston, she supervised and prosecuted qui tam cases alongside parallel criminal investigations.

From Swarthmore to Main Justice

Durrell graduated with honors from Swarthmore College in 1975 and cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978, where she served as a notes editor of the American Criminal Law Review and worked on the staff of Senator Patrick Leahy. She spent six years as an associate at Boston's Hill & Barlow in complex civil litigation and five years as an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1989, she joined the United States Attorney's Office in Boston. From 1991 to 1992, she served in Washington as a Deputy Associate Attorney General before returning to Boston as deputy chief and then chief of the Civil Division. Her government service earned her the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service, the Justice Department's highest honor.

When Durrell left the Justice Department in 2002, she chose to represent whistleblowers rather than companies defending fraud claims. The following year, she opened Durrell Law Office and began working with Robert M. Thomas Jr., another former federal prosecutor. They later founded the Whistleblower Law Collaborative in Boston. Their collaboration has spanned more than two decades, representing relators nationwide; Durrell has practiced False Claims Act law in government and private practice for more than three decades.

Twenty Years of the Collaborative

Durrell's clients have included employees, executives, and clinicians with information about health-care fraud. Her cases include the $137.5 million resolution with the insurer WellCare and a $150 million settlement with the home-health provider Amedisys. Pharmaceutical matters include the $214.5 million Elan and Eisai resolution and the $465 million Mylan EpiPen case. A later Cardinal Health case resolved for $13.125 million over allegations that the company paid physician practices in advance to induce them to purchase specialty drugs.

In 2022, Durrell served as counsel in the DermaTran compounding-pharmacy litigation, which produced a $6,876,564 resolution with DermaTran and other defendants over copay waivers and inflated prices reported to government payers. She and Thomas also co-represented an anonymous client who received a $17 million award from the Securities and Exchange Commission's whistleblower program.

The Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund named Durrell and Thomas its 2017 Lawyers of the Year. A fellow of the American Bar Foundation, she chaired the pharmaceuticals, biologics, and device fraud subcommittee of the anti-fraud coalition's COVID-19 task force. Her writing and conference presentations address whistleblower investigations, settlements, damages calculations, and health-care fraud. During the pandemic, she spoke about clinical-trial fraud and medical devices as the government funded the development and purchase of new treatments and equipment.

Steadying the Person Behind the Case

Durrell prepares clients' evidence for government investigators: a coherent account, corroborating documents, a calculation of losses, and an explanation of the industry. Whistleblowers may still work for the employer whose conduct they report, facing professional isolation and years of confidentiality while an investigation proceeds under seal. She guides them through those restrictions and the limited control they have over the government's investigation.

In a 2012 paper for the American Bar Association, Durrell argued for giving relators a more active part in that investigation. She proposed agreeing on assignments early and revisiting them as the evidence developed. Clients could help identify witnesses, explain a company's organization, and connect documents to events investigators needed to understand. Her proposal also required careful coordination over privileged material and the limits on what a client could collect or disclose.

In the Ensign Group case, Durrell represented a former contracts manager who also served on the company's compliance committee. The client alleged that the skilled-nursing enterprise paid physicians inflated monthly amounts to induce patient referrals. She had tried to replace those payments with hourly rates tied to actual work and fair market value, but alleged that the company overrode her efforts.

After the government declined to intervene in 2020, Durrell and Thomas continued the case with Hirst Law Group and Bird Marella. The team developed the referral, compensation, and billing evidence over four more years of litigation. The case was still in discovery when it settled for more than $47.3 million in 2024, and the government awarded the client a share of the recovery. She had pursued her allegations for nine and a half years.