August 22, 2024
Washington, DC, August 22, 2024 – Twelve Phillips & Cohen attorneys have been selected for Best Lawyers in America® 2025 edition for their work representing whistleblowers.
Phillips & Cohen partners, Mary Louise Cohen, Erika Kelton, Peter Chatfield, Colette Matzzie, Claire Sylvia, Stephen Hasegawa, Jeffrey Dickstein, Sean McKessy, Edward Arens, Amy Easton, Matthew Smith, and of counsel, Larry Zoglin, are included in the 2025 list of Best Lawyers for their work in qui tam law.
In 2023, Phillips & Cohen had an exceptional year, settling 13 whistleblower cases with the aggregate settlement amounts exceeding $370 million, with the majority of the funds going back to the U.S. Treasury.
Best Lawyers in America 2025:
- Mary Louise Cohen is a co-founder of Phillips & Cohen LLP and a key voice in shaping the contemporary False Claims Act practice. Her noteworthy qui tam wins include a case against TAP Pharmaceuticals for allegedly paying illegal kickbacks to doctors that settled for $875 million and a case against Quest Diagnostics that was settled for $302 million, the largest amount paid by a medical lab company for a faulty healthcare product.
- Erika Kelton has extensive experience representing FCA, SEC, and CFTC whistleblowers. She won two of the largest healthcare fraud settlements ever: $3 billion by GlaxoSmithKline and $2.3 billion by Pfizer. In 2022, Kelton had another record-setting year, including an SEC combined reward of over $40 million, likely the largest SEC whistleblower awards made to international whistleblowers. Kelton has secured the most SEC/CFTC awards under Dodd-Frank Act for her whistleblower clients.
- Peter Chatfield’s successes include representing the whistleblower in a qui tam case against HCA, one of the nation’s largest healthcare providers, which was the basis for a majority share of HCA’s $881 million settlement with the government. Chatfield also represented the first whistleblower to report to US government officials off-label sales of dangerous synthetic opioids by Cephalon Inc. for unapproved and unsafe uses. In that case, Cephalon Inc. paid a total of $425 million to settle four qui tam lawsuits and a criminal charge.
- Colette Matzzie has represented whistleblowers in a number of significant qui tam lawsuits involving recoveries for both federal and state governments. Her successes including groundbreaking settlements against electronic health records vendors eClinicalWorks for $155 million, Modernizing Medicine for $45 million, and NextGen Healthcare for $31 million. Most recently, Matzzie secured a settlement with the Armstrong Group of Companies for $6.5 million to resolve allegations the companies submitted false claims to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s Universal Service Fund (USF) High Cost Program.
- Claire Sylvia is a nationally recognized authority in False Claims Act qui tam matters. Her book, The False Claims Act: Fraud Against The Government (4th Ed 2023 & Supp. 2024), has been an important reference since it was first published in 2004. Among her successes is a first-of-its-kind federal and state False Claims Act case involving cybersecurity issues, which Cisco Systems paid $8.6 million to resolve. In 2023, Sylvia along with her partners Amy Easton and Jeffrey Dickstein, represented the whistleblower in a qui tam case brought against UPMC and its top surgeon, securing an $8.5 million settlement for alleged fraud and risk of patient harm.
- Stephen Hasegawa has represented whistleblowers in cases involving healthcare, defense, aerospace, financial services, and government procurement. He helped secure a $75 million settlement against a subsidiary of Community Health Systems Inc. and three hospitals for allegations the hospitals improperly increased federal payments intended for indigent patient care and obtained a $22.8 million settlement against Linde GmbH and Linde Engineering North America for evading US customs duties. In 2024, Hasegawa secured a $12 million settlement with CityMD for billing the federal COVID-19 uninsured program for tests performed on insured patients.
- Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Dickstein brings over 30 years of healthcare litigation experience to his work for whistleblowers. In 2023, he and his colleague Amy Easton settled a $22 million lawsuit against a Medicare Advantage plan in Maine and New Hampshire, alleging the plan committed fraud by making its patients appear to be sicker than they really were to obtain higher payments from Medicare. Dickstein helped secure a settlement against a West Virginia hospital for violating the False Claims Act, Stark Law, and Anti-Kickback Statute, yielding a $50 million settlement. In 2024, Dickstein, along with Easton, secured a $9.9 million settlement with Atlantic Home Health Care for alleged kickbacks and providing “telehealth” for patients in lieu of sending qualified medical personnel to patients’ homes as required.
- Sean McKessy is the first Chief of the SEC Whistleblower Office and the principal architect of the SEC’s whistleblower program, bringing unparalleled knowledge of the SEC’s whistleblower program in his work for whistleblowers. He represents clients before the SEC and the CFTC and has won for his clients awards of $20 million, $1.25 million, and in 2023, $9 million.
- Edward Arens has had success representing whistleblowers in a number of large-scale cases, including a 2023 whistleblower case against KBR for allegedly defrauding the United States Army in connection with materials used for the Iraq War that settled for over $108 million. In 2023, Arens also successfully represented a whistleblower in a case related to California’s Medicaid expansion that resulted in settlements totaling over $95 million, as well as representing two whistleblowers in a case against a medical oxygen supplier that yielded a $29 million settlement.
- As a former DOJ senior trial counsel, Amy Easton has had numerous successes in qui tam law as a partner at Phillips & Cohen. In 2023, along with her colleague Jeffrey Dickstein, she secured a settlement of $22 million against a Medicaid Advantage plan in Maine and New Hampshire, alleging the company committed fraud by making patients appear to be sicker than they really were to obtain higher payments from Medicare. Easton successfully secured a settlement against a West Virginia hospital for violating the False Claims Act, Stark Law, and Anti-Kickback Statute, yielding a $50 million settlement, and in 2024, Easton helped secure a settlement for $9.9 million with Atlantic Home Health Care to settle allegations the company treated patients by telephone suffering from radiation exposure who required in-home patient care.
- Matthew Smith has had decades of success representing whistleblowers. Smith, along with his colleague Peter Chatfield, helped secure a majority share of HCA’s $881 million global settlement with the government. In addition, Smith was on the team that pursued a case against Kyphon/Medtronic Spine and hundreds of hospitals for a fraudulent billing scheme, recovering $180 million for the government over 13 years. Smith is also involved with the development of potential new whistleblower cases for Phillips & Cohen.
- Larry Zoglin represents whistleblowers in qui tam cases as well as under the SEC and IRS whistleblower programs. He was the lead attorney in a qui tam case alleging skilled nursing facilities owned by the Ensign Group were engaged in a Medicare billing fraud scheme that settled for $48 million. Zoglin also served as co-lead counsel with Colette Matzzie in the eClinicalWorks case that settled for $155 million.
Phillips & Cohen is the most successful law firm representing whistleblowers
Phillips & Cohen is the most successful law firm representing whistleblowers, with recoveries from our cases totaling over $13 billion. Phillips & Cohen’s roster includes former federal prosecutors, the first head of the SEC Office of the Whistleblower, a former Director of the CFTC Whistleblower Office, a former deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the author of a leading treatise on the False Claims Act and attorneys with decades of experience representing whistleblowers. For more information or to discuss your case contact us.