Fraud and Criminal Investigations Litigation
Often institutions and people are unfairly damaged when allegations of corporate misconduct are raised before facts are known. Today's media and technology enable instantaneous global dissemination of negative publicity without a forum to assess its accuracy before damage is done to a company's reputation. Due to a lack of objective fact-finding and reporting, crises are often resolved by public perceptions without regard to the actual facts. A loss of credibility with the public can lead to a devastating erosion of brand loyalty.
The McKenna Long & Aldridge (MLA) team of attorneys and professionals assists clients in identifying and engaging independent fact finders to conduct special or independent investigations. We assisted the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in its recent development of the AAA Independent Fact-Finding Service. This provides independent factual and legal investigations and reports to corporations (as well as non-profits, judges, elected officials and others) seeking objective, independent reports or recommendations regarding factual or legal questions facing them. Criminal investigations and prosecutions are often accompanied by parallel civil litigations and administrative proceedings. This is particularly common in securities, real estate, and insurance matters. MLA attorneys successfully represent clients in parallel matters and can help you navigate through the challenging issues they present.
Our attorneys also participate in criminal and civil investigations involving the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, local U.S. attorney's offices and various investigative services. When accusations turn to fraud, we have an active and highly regarded white collar defense practice that includes former federal prosecutors, each with many years of criminal jury trial experience. We defend clients at all stages of the investigative and enforcement process, most often against allegations of sophisticated criminal and civil fraud. We also assist clients in identifying and engaging independent fact finders to conduct special or independent investigations.
Our Fraud and Criminal Investigations attorneys and Government Contracts team works together to provide effective representation on issues relating to procurement fraud or other potential wrongdoing under federal government contracts. Our depth of experience in government contracts, and in handling white collar crime issues, allows us to marshal the facts, analyze the issues, and develop an appropriate response to government investigations or prosecutions that is efficient and effective.
Our procurement fraud practitioners can assist clients at each stage of a proceeding by:
- Providing counsel on a client’s obligations to make disclosures of problems discovered in the course of internal audit, or from some other source;
- Assisting clients in conducting internal investigations in advance of, or in response to, a government inquiry;
- Advocating the client's interests to the government investigators and managing the complex and important communications between the investigators and client personnel; and
- Litigating the fraud allegations in either the context of a civil case or a criminal proceeding.
Our Procurement Fraud practice includes practitioners with broad experience in defending clients against suits under the civil False Claims Act, including qui tam actions brought by private individuals on behalf of the federal government under the Act. The cases we have defended under the False Claims Act have included some of the largest ever brought against contractors under the statute. Those cases have spanned the range from the False Claims Act; including actions arising out of billion dollar aerospace and defense contracts; the integrated management contracts at Department of Energy sites; to commercial computer contracts. Our mix of civil fraud experience and government contracts knowledge positions us, and the clients we represent, to prevail with innovative and effective defenses.
The MLA team also represents health care clients in a wide variety of general litigation in state and federal courts, as well as before administrative tribunals, throughout the U.S. For example, we have represented health care providers in cases relating to claims of wrongful termination, civil rights violations, defamation, medical partnership disputes, staff privileges and RICO.
We also have extensive experience involving claims of physician and nursing negligence and in ERISA litigation, where we regularly address issues of health care plan interpretation, reimbursement and federal pre-emption. As with all of our litigation, we approach these matters with the goal of achieving the best practical result as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.
Professionals
Advisories
- November 20, 2012
- July 26, 2010
- April 29, 2010