Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this blog is titled “Retaliation & Whistleblowing Claims within the Life Sciences Industry” and Part II of our new series on “Life Sciences Industry Guide for Labor and Employment,” in which we review the basics and have an overview of what is encompasses as part of the life sciences industry. In Part I of the series, we mentioned that the life sciences law is an umbrella term that broadly covers a wide range of policy judgment, scientific discovery, and legal matters that impact how medical devices, drugs, biotechnological products, and pharmaceuticals are developed, produced, distributed, and used. We also added that as a highly regulated field, the life sciences industry is exceedingly vulnerable to unethical practices and, consequently, significantly high in employee claims seeking to “blow the whistle” on allegedly unethical, criminal, and unlawful practices, which introduces us to the subject of whistleblowing and retaliation in this blog.

Retaliation & Whistleblowing Claims within the Life Sciences Industry

As mentioned above, employers within the highly regulated life sciences industry are significantly vulnerable to employee claims seeking to “blow the whistle” on allegedly unethical, criminal, and unlawful practices. Based on a recent report released in December 2018 by the Department of Justice, while $2.1 billion came directly from whistleblower actions, $2.5 billion of the $2.8 billion recovered pursuant to 31 USC § 3729 et seq. (the False Claims Act (FCA)) were recovered from the industry of healthcare.

In light of these statistics, some of the most typical scenarios giving rise to whistleblower activities and actions include, but are not limited to:

  • The falsified reporting of drug research grants information to government agencies
  • The making of inappropriate changes to patients’ prescriptions from one drug to another (based on various improper reasons, such as kickbacks)
  • Knowingly providing defective products
  • The provision of kickbacks to medical providers for prescribing certain drugs-and-
  • The sale and manufacture of unneeded drugs and/or medication and providing such unneeded treatment.

While it gives rise to a high percentage of litigations in this field, retaliating against anybody who brings “whistleblowing claims” in good faith is prohibited under most state and federal laws. In fact, these laws provide a wide range of whistleblower protections that aim to protect whistleblowers and ensure that they are not retaliated against or harassed for engaging, in good faith, in whistleblowing activities and actions. Employers within the life sciences industry should carefully review the laws that govern whistleblowing activities in their states and identify specific provisions that may be applicable to complaints against their businesses.

In Part III of this new series, we shall move the discussion forward and hammer on “Whistleblower Protections under the False Claims Act (FCA)” for an overview of the whistleblower protections provided under this Act.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.