Whistleblower Law Collaborative co-founders Suzanne E. Durrell and Robert M. Thomas, Jr., joined forces in 2003 to represent whistleblowers in qui tam actions under the False Claims Act. Ms. Durrell was the former Chief of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, where she spent twelve years supervising and prosecuting False Claims Act cases. Mr. Thomas was a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who spent eight years in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where he prosecuted white-collar fraud and tried dozens of cases. Their combination of civil and criminal experience give them a unique perspective on how to build a successful whistleblower case.
Over the years, attorneys Mr. Thomas and Ms. Durrell have developed one of the preeminent whistleblower practices nationwide, with clients involved in many major FCA settlements, including the largest settlements of both 2017 and 2018. In 2017, they received the prestigious “Lawyer of the Year” award from Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, a national public interest non-profit dedicated to combatting fraud against the government and protecting taxpayer funds through private-public partnerships. Recognized as “an incomparable team” who “have had a hand in some of the largest False Claims Act cases ever settled or won in court,” attorneys Thomas and Durrell received the award for “an extraordinarily successful year in careers devoted to fighting fraud.” This included their work spearheading the $465 million Mylan Epi-Pen case (the first major pharmaceutical prosecution where the client whistleblower was another pharmaceutical company) as well as their cumulative body of work over the prior fifteen years.
In recent years, the Whistleblower Law Collaborative has expanded its capacity to do this important work with the addition of Bruce C. Judge, Erica Blachman Hitchings, David W.S. Lieberman, and Linda C. Severin. These attorneys fit the mold set by co-founders Thomas and Durrell: all have prior government experience fighting fraud and share a passion for helping clients bring wrongdoers to justice.
