You can now listen to Insurance Journal articles!
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday preserved the Justice Department’s power to unilaterally dismiss lawsuits filed under a law that lets whistleblowers sue businesses on behalf of the government to recover taxpayer money paid to companies based on false claims in exchange for a portion of any recovery.
The 8-1 ruling upheld a lower court’s decision to allow the Justice Department to toss a lawsuit against a UnitedHealth Group Inc unit by a former employee named Jesse Polansky who accused it of wrongdoing.
Get Connected to the P/C Industry!
Follow Insurance Journal on LinkedIn and then join our group to connect to 150k property/casualty professionals.
Insurance Journal
Polansky had sought to bar the department from dismissing whistleblower lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act in instances in which the government initially declined to exercise its right to take over the cases.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Polansky’s 2012 lawsuit that had accused UnitedHealth’s Executive Health Resources unit of defrauding Medicare by falsely certifying hospital admissions as medically necessary.
Whistleblower cases brought under the False Claims Act resulted in $48.2 billion in recoveries from 1987 to 2021, according to Justice Department data. Most of that came from the 20% of cases that the government exercised its right to join and take over, with cases that whistleblowers litigated...
A US judge has dismissed veteran singer Smokey Robinson's defamation claim against four former housekeepers who have accused him of sexual assault. The women sued the Motown star, 86, last year fo...