The hospice parties advocated for a fee haircut to account for time spent on unsuccessful claims, but the court held “substantial relief” was what mattered, and the government had settled for $9.2 million in restitution.
The federal district court in Atlanta, Georgia, awarded more than $1.9 million in attorneys’ fees to relators’ attorneys in a decade-old qui tam action against a hospice provider after the government only recently intervened and settled a subset of the claims. The court held that a reduction of fees, based solely on a release of some claims, was unwarranted because the relators’ claims were intertwined. The court said the law was clear that settlement, which did not involve an admission of guilt nor a concession about the merits, would not affect fees where the relators’ cases ultimately led to substantial relief, $9.2 million in restitution for the government, without a full release of liability. Substantial delay in resolving the case justified awarding attorneys’ fees at present-day rates rather than historical rates. The court sorted through a variety of objections to attorney time records and found the objections largely unfounded. The consolidation of three complaints initially filed in different locales complicated the selection of a local rate. The court capped fee awards at $1,100 per hour, the rate of the most experienced attorney relator attorney based in the Atlanta area. Applying a local rate was the remedy for inability to justify...
Healthcare A New England nursing home group, its owner, and an executive agreed to pay $1 million to settle allegations first brought by a whistleblower that they billed Medicare and Medicaid for...