Halunen Law False Claims Act team applauds $43M judgment over Precision Lens and its president Paul Ehlen in extensive kickback scheme
March 17th, 2023
A federal jury recently found that Precision Lens was responsible for submitting 64,575 kickback-tainted false claims to Medicare between 2006 and 2015. While the jury returned a verdict in favor of the United States for more than $43 million dollars, total damages may surpass $800 million.
Whistleblower, Kipp Fesenmaier, brought the original lawsuit under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA). In February 2018, U.S. Attorney Gregory Brooker announced that the United States filed a complaint-in-intervention against Precision Lens and Ehlen. Ohio law firm Morgan Verkamp, LLC was lead private counsel. Halunen Law served as local counsel.
“The False Claims Act itself envisions a close public-private partnership between the Department of Justice and whistleblowers and their counsel,” said Halunen Law FCA attorney Nathaniel F. Smith. “This case shows that the public-private partnership the FCA embodies is effective in achieving significant results. Government and private counsel in this case worked as a team throughout the litigation and trial. This tremendous teamwork, and the hard work of the jury, led to this significant result.”