Steven Cohen
Steven H. Cohen has been practicing law in Chicago for more than 25 years and representing whistleblowers in qui tam cases since 1995. In 2001, he founded the Cohen Law Group, where he has dedicated his practice to representing whistleblower clients in qui tam cases brought under federal and state false claims laws.
Steve has investigated and prosecuted dozens of sealed and unsealed qui tam cases on behalf of physicians, nurses, compliance officers, billing coordinators, sales representatives, managers and senior company officers in cases spanning the spectrum of health care and other government programs fraud and abuse. He has hands-on expertise with both the federal False Claims Act and state whistleblower/qui tam laws. Through his extensive qui tam practice, Steve has developed close working relationships with U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, and prosecutors in United States Attorneys Offices and States' Attorneys General Offices throughout the country.
Steve is currently lead Relator's counsel in State of Illinois ex rel Groesche and Raymer v. University of Chicago Hospitals, in which the State of Illinois has joined in prosecuting the University of Chicago Hospitals in a first-of-its-kind Medicaid fraud case relating to the treatment of critically ill babies admitted to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
In 2000, Steve was retained by Dean Steinke to investigate Merck & Co., Inc.'s ("Merck") marketing practices in connection with their most popular drugs including Zocor® and Vioxx®. That investigation led to the filing of the two cases, United States ex rel Steinke v. Merck and Nevada ex rel Steinke v. Merck. Steve was co-lead counsel for the Relator during the course of the seven-year investigation conducted by the federal Government and the States' Medicaid Fraud Unit team. In the Nevada action, Steve worked with the Nevada Attorney General and his co-counsel to obtain a landmark ruling interpreting the federal Medicaid Rebate Act's Best Price provisions. As a result of the closely coordinated work of federal and state prosecutors and relator's counsel, Merck agreed to pay more than $400 million, $399 million plus interest calculated from April 2007, to the federal Government and the states to settle the allegations in these cases.
As a co-founder of the Whistleblower Action Network, Steve and an alliance of lawyers investigate and prosecute qui tam lawsuits on behalf of whistleblowers. Today, Steve and other affiliated Whistleblower Action Network attorneys are lead counsel in numerous pending investigations and cases throughout the country.
Steve is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern Law School in Chicago where he teaches clinical trial advocacy and serves on the faculty of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA). He also speaks about fraud and abuse issues to industry and professional groups.
Mark Kleiman
Mark Kleiman represents whistleblowers across the country. Cases he has filed, including this one, have recovered more than $500 million for the federal and state Governments.
The former executive director of a national consumer health group, Kleiman has served on an FDA advisory panel and on the boards of state licensing agencies and national health care organizations. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American Public Health Association, and the American Cancer Society.
Kleiman has lectured at Columbia University, UCLA, and the University of North Carolina School of Law, and has taught seminars for the American Bar Association and American Health Lawyers Association. He has also discussed health care fraud as a guest on the PBS Television network's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.
As an experienced trial lawyer, Kleiman has represented doctors, nurses, administrators and other whistleblowers in health care, as well as engineers and others in the defense, construction, banking, and education industries. He has prosecuted fraud cases against drug companies, hospitals, nursing home chains, and medical groups, as well as military contractors and vocational school chains.
Kleiman has also served as a government-appointed Special Master in cooperation with the California Department of Insurance and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office during investigations of fraudulent medical-legal activities.
Education
Kleiman is a cum laude graduate of the Southwestern University School of Law and holds a Master's in Public Health degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has published in the Health Care Fraud & Abuse Newsletter, Advances in Long Term Care, the Community Mental Health Journal, the Bulletin of the Joint Center for Political Studies, and the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
BethAnne Yeager
BethAnne Yeager has been involved in qui tam litigation since 2004, working with Mark Allen Kleiman and the Cohen Law Group on a wide variety of cases under the federal False Claims Act ("FCA") and state false claims laws. A member of qui tam litigation bar, Taxpayers Against Fraud, and part of the Whistleblower Action Network, she has been actively involved in the investigation and prosecution of the Nevada and Eastern District of Pennsylvania cases against Merck since 2004.
Yeager also is a counsel to relators in Illinois ex rel. Raymer and Grosche v. University of Chicago Hospital, an unsealed qui tam action brought under the Illinois Whistleblower Reward and Recovery Act ("IWRPA") in which the State of Illinois is prosecuting the hospital for alleged false claims against Illinois Medicaid. She also has represented plaintiffs in employee retaliation cases brought under the anti-retaliation provisions of the FCA.
Yeager practiced in California since she was graduated from Cornell Law School in 1989. A member of the Wisconsin bar, she clerked for the Hon. Justice N. Patrick Crooks of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the 2000-2001 term. Before and after her clerkship, she taught "Women and the Law" during summer sessions at the University of Wisconsin.
Prior to qui tam litigation, Yeager practiced in the areas of employment discrimination, civil rights, and consumer fraud for more than 15 years. Her employment discrimination work includes representing the plaintiff in a landmark decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that reversed a finding of immunity for the University of Wisconsin.
Among highlights of her legal career is a consumer fraud action for which she was named a finalist, with Kleiman, for the 1998 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. Yeager also served as co-counsel in the first sexual harassment trial in Marin County, California, resulting in the highest award against the State at the time for such a claim.
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