A team of lawyers from Reese Marketos recently received the “2024 Lawyers of the Year” award during The Anti-Fraud Coalition’s 24th Annual Conference in September 2024.
Along with co-counsel at Berger Montague, TAF selected Reese Marketos for the firms’ outstanding results achieved in 2024 for qui tam whistleblowers in two False Claims Act cases: one that yielded a $100 million settlement and the other resulting in a $150 million jury verdict on which relators seek a final judgment of more than $1.8 billion.
Josh Russ, Pete Marketos, Andrew Wirmani, Adam Sanderson, and Whitney Wendel accepted the award for Reese Marketos.
RM lawyers obtained the $100 million settlement agreement on behalf of relator Marc Silver two weeks before a trial slated to begin against PharMerica Corp. The trial team was prepared to present evidence before a jury that PharMerica, an in-house pharmacy services provider for nursing homes, engaged in a kickback scheme in which it offered steeply discounted prices for certain Medicare patients in exchange for more lucrative Medicare and Medicaid patient populations.
In the second case, the Reese Marketos trial team sparred with Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Products in a five-week jury trial in New Jersey federal court that culminated in a $150 million verdict. The jury also found that Janssen violated the False Claims Act by causing the submission of 159,000 false claims to Medicare and Medicaid through the off-label promotion of its HIV drugs. RM is currently seeking mandatory treble damages and statutory damages of more than $1 billion, for a total judgment of more than $1.8 billion.
Both cases were litigated in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The PharMerica case is United States ex rel. Silver v. Omnicare, Inc., PharMerica Corp. et al., No. 1:11-cv-01326. The Janssen case is United States et al. ex rel. Penelow v. Janssen Products, LP, No. 3:12-cv-07758.
The Anti-Fraud Coalition (TAF) “Lawyers of the Year” award recognizes TAF member(s) who achieved outstanding results, overcame especially challenging circumstances or brought change to an industry through their efforts.
The lawyers faced uphill battles in both cases: In PharMerica, Berger Montague litigated the case for 13 years – defeating multiple motions to dismiss, spending three years in the appeals court, and fighting major discovery battles – before reaching the eve-of-trial settlement. In Janssen, the Reese Marketos trial team presented relators’ case while combatting Janssen’s defenses for more than five weeks before obtaining the jury’s favorable verdict. As trial dates neared, Berger Montague hired Reese Marketos as lead trial counsel in both cases specifically due to their track record of winning complex commercial trials with compressed timelines to prepare.
“Our job is to ensure that defendants who choose to gamble with a False Claims Act jury trial ultimately regret that decision,” said RM founding partner Pete Marketos. “And we believe we are good at our job.”
Founded in 1986, the TAF Coalition is a nonprofit organization that supports whistleblowers who expose fraud on the government and financial markets.