January 12, 2007 Host: Charisse Dengler Guest: Glenn Whitaker
Charisse Dengler talks with Glenn Whitaker about what first inspired him to become an attorney, the time he spent working for the Justice Department, and the current work he is doing involving the False Claims Act. One of very few attorneys who specialize in False Claims Act matters, Whitaker provides an overview of the act and explains the types of cases he deals with on a daily basis.
In addition, Whitaker goes into detail about his time at the Justice Department and recounts his involvement in the famous Karen Silkwood case that later inspired a television movie. Whitaker also shares his advice for law students, discusses his favorite aspects of being an attorney, and gives a brief overview of his career path from law school graduation to the present. Duration: 00:16:18
Charisse Dengler: Hello everyone and welcome to another LawCrossing podcast, this is Charisse Dengler. Today I'm here with Glenn Whitaker and we're going to talk to him a little bit about his career.
Charisse Dengler: Tell me where you went to law school at?
Glenn Whitaker: Sure. I went to George Washington University Law School.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. And what first made you decide to go to Law School?
Glenn Whitaker: That's a good question. I really didn't have any lawyers in my family but I grew up watching a guy here locally in Cincinnati on television who did a lot of murder deceptions. And I was kind of inspired by that. He was an interesting character and he was somebody who learned to use the press early on in his career. And I think that caused me to think it would okay to be a lawyer.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. And then can you give me an overview of your career path after you graduated from law school?
Glenn Whitaker: Yeah. I worked for a federal judge for a year in Baltimore, U.S. district court. And I went from there to a small law firm in D.C. that represented international labor unions. I did that for about three years and found that what I liked best about it was the litigation and the trial work. So, I went to the department of justice. This was 1976 and I was there until 1980. While I was there I was special litigation counsel to the federal programs branch, the civil division. And I ended up doing some fairly high profile stuff including representing the FBI agents who were sued in the Karen Silkwood case which became a movie as you may recall.
Charisse Dengler: Yeah.
Glenn Whitaker: Maybe you were too young. And I represented the CIA in a couple of different lawsuits against the former CIA employees who had written books about the CIA without getting pre-publication review. One of those cases finally got up to the Supreme Court. They won there but I also represented the government in a couple of national strike cases, which we sought cooling off injunction. So, we got to do a lot of interesting things that were fairly high - highly publicized.
Charisse Dengler: Yeah.
Glenn Whitaker: I left in 1980 and came back to Cincinnati where I grew up and I have done all kinds of trial work since that time with two different law firms. I started out doing some white-collar criminal work way back in the early eighties, was successful at it and did more. And it kind of fit nicely with the complex litigation I was doing in the civil side anyway because most of the criminal cases I did were fraud cases. They involved lots of documents, complicated issues that had to get worked through. And it was fortuitous because all of that work, criminal work, eventually led to doing false claims act litigation that I do. Because most false claims cases when they're filed they initiate an investigation by the department of justice. And sometimes those investigations are not only civil, but they're also criminal. And actually the first false claims case I ever did I got involved cause I was representing the defendant in a criminal investigation that was on going. And lo and behold we find out that there was a false claims act case under seal.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. In the email that I received when the person was nominating you to be the all star, they talked about how you're one of the only - that there's not very many specialists I guess on the false claims act in the nation. I was just wondering like why that is? Is it because it's relatively new?
Glenn Whitaker: There's a fair amount of litigation and it's growing but not many people have tried cases to juries in that area. I've tried two cases successfully now to juries in that area and that's fairly unique. I don't know that there's many if any other lawyers in the country who have had that many trials in that area of the law.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. And can you give me a general overview of the false claims act?
Glenn Whitaker: Yeah. It actually was enacted back during the civil war and it was designed to eliminate fraud on the government. And the people who conceived this statute, congress passed it, decided to make it kind of a bounty hunter statute. So that any private citizen who learns of some fraudulent act on the government, the submission of a claim for payment that is false to the United States, can bring a lawsuit. And when they bring those cases, and by the way the statutes evolve over time. In 1986 it was amended. It got considerably more teeth I guess at that point and has become quite a well used statute. It is interesting. The recoveries in fiscal year of two thousand six that the government has made are three point one million dollars.
Charisse Dengler: Wow.
Glenn Whitaker: So, it's grown exponentially over time from - really from '86 forward. It's been primarily used or has been primarily used in the past used in the government contracting area. So, the defense contractors for example who supply the government with whatever it was and somehow or another cheated on the process end up getting sued under the statute. And it's a difficult statute in the sense that it is difficult for ... because it provides for a travel banishment and it also provides for penalties up to eleven thousand dollars per false claim.
Charisse Dengler: Okay.
Glenn Whitaker: So, the numbers can become very large to say the least. And that's especially so in the area that it's being used in most these days, which is in the healthcare field. Because as you can imagine a hospital will submit many, many thousands of claims to the government for payment under Medicare and Medicare aid. And even if the government isn't injured by the falsity of some or all of those claims and there are situations like that where they're really... There's still the risk of a penalty of anywhere from fifty five hundred to eleven thousand dollars per false claim. So you can find a situation where and I've had cases like this, where the government really isn't out anything, but it has received false claims from an entity that submits claims for payment.
Charisse Dengler: Right.
Glenn Whitaker: And the government takes the position you now owe us penalties. It's a pretty draconian statute when it comes to penalties and damages.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. I guess I'm going to go into a little bit more detail about your time in the justice department.
Glenn Whitaker: Yeah.
Charisse Dengler: And since the Karen Silkwood case is - since most people have heard of it, know about it, can you tell me more about your involvement in that and how it was?
Glenn Whitaker: Yeah. I was what is known as special litigation counsel for this group within the civil division called the federal programs branch. And at that time it was kind of a catchall group and I ended up being appointed to represent the two FBI agents. Actually the one FBI agent who investigated Karen Silkwood's death and his boss who were both sued in this case. You may recall that Karen Silkwood was an employee of the Kerr-McGee Corporation and she had been contaminated at one of their facilities by plutonium. They made plutonium at their facility. She ended up dying in a car accident that many thought was mysterious because at the time she was complaining about safety violations at the plant. The FBI was called in to investigate her death primarily because she had been involved in union organizing and there was a question of whether or not one of the statutes - federal statutes that deals with that had been violated.
So, the agents began their investigation and ultimately concluded that there was no basis for a violation of that statute called the Hobbs Act. And they also found essentially that she'd fallen asleep and run off the road and died. The family of Karen Silkwood didn't accept that and they sued the agency and they sued Kerr-McGee Corporation. They sued Kerr-McGee primarily for the contamination that she had sustained I guess before she died. And sought damages for that. But they sued the FBI agents for covering up alleged wrongdoing by Kerr-McGee. Gerry Spence, who is quite an interesting character and a lawyer, was on the other side of that case. And I ended up getting the case dismissed against the two FBI agents. The case did go to trial against Kerr-McGee and there was a, I think it was a ten million dollar verdict against Kerr-McGee. That ended up getting reversed and then reinstated through a Supreme Court appeal. It was a very complicated process but happily we got out of the case before it went to trial.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. Why did you end up leaving the justice department?
Glenn Whitaker: Well, a lot of the stuff that I did, occasionally against the CIA agents. We had one case where the State Department had pulled the passport of a CIA employee who'd written a book about the CIA. Really he was basically a double agent and a pretty bad guy. But cases like that and the others things I was doing were being pretty closely monitored by the White House and by people who were more interested in the political implications than they were in the case itself. I really got kind of tired of that, decided I'd just get out of government service and go do something else. So, I thought about coming back home. I'm an only child, my parents are getting older and so I decided I'd just come back to Cincinnati and that was a good decision.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. What would you say is your favorite overall part of being an attorney?
Glenn Whitaker: The trial work. I really enjoy being a trial lawyer. I'm a member the American College of Trial Lawyers which is a purely elected group. You can't buy your way in; you can't ask to be admitted in. They got to decide that you are somebody who ought to be admitted. I've done a lot of trial work over time and I hope to continue doing that the rest of my life because that's the part of the work that I enjoy most.
Charisse Dengler: Okay. Do you have any advice for law students who may want to go into the area that you're in?
Glenn Whitaker: I teach a course in trial practice at the University of Cincinnati and I always tell people that you have to be careful as you make the choice of being a trial lawyer because it's more of a lifestyle choice than it is a job. You have to deal with the ups and downs. God knows there are plenty of them. It's great to ... but you can't win everything. So, you're going to loose and you've got to get used to that roller coaster ride where your emotions go up and down. And if you can't do that and you can't commit to a case that is going to take you away from home for a month at a time sometimes or more it's not for you. It's kind of an adrenaline filled job in many ways and there are - if you're somebody who likes more of a steady life it's not something you want to do.
Charisse Dengler: Yeah, okay. We're together then. And then I guess in closing just tell me a little bit about yourself and what you like to do for fun and your family and your hobbies and stuff like that.
Glenn Whitaker: Well, really two things. I have a couple of daughters. I'm an old dad. I started late and I've got a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old. My thirteen year old is a heavyweight basketball player so I go to her basketball games. But my older daughter is an equestrian so I go a lot of horse shows when I'm not at basketball games. But when I do things for myself I go out west and hike and backpack in southeastern Utah.
Charisse Dengler: Okay, all right. That's all my questions that I had for you.
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