Author: JGL Law

McCash and Miller specifically sponsored a foursome of student golfers from the Southern Maryland Junior Golf Association (SMJGA) in Upper Marlboro.

SMJGA is a non-profit association that is dedicated to providing educational, developmental, and life skills to Southern Maryland youth. The association exposes students to golf and helps them improve their skills. By doing so, SMJGA provides students the opportunity to learn valuable lessons such as respect, discipline, and sportsmanship.

More and more frequently, employers are evading the legal requirement to pay overtime to their employees by choosing to pay them on a salaried basis instead of an hourly wage, and then telling the employees that they’re not entitled to overtime because they have an “exempt” job title. But often this practice amounts to nothing more than illegal wage theft from workers who should be classified as hourly and are being denied overtime pay that they deserve.

In June 2016, along with Andrew Santillo of Winebrake & Santillo of Dresher, Pa., I filed a civil case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland charging Illinois-based Heartland Dental, LLC, with violating the law by doing just that. Our complaint alleged that Heartland Dental committed wage theft by denying overtime pay, which is normally “time-and-a-half” of their regular pay, to office managers whom the company misclassified as salaried. Heartland Dental hired these office managers to work in dental offices throughout the country.

On May 23, 2017, we obtained a judgment, totaling over $25,000.00, entered on the basis of settlements with Heartland Dental on behalf of our three clients– all of them residents of Prince George’s County, Md., and all of them “salaried” office managers who were improperly denied overtime pay by Heartland Dental.

Heartland Dental is a company that provides office managers, marketing personnel, IT workers, and other support staff to dentists across the country. It works with more than 750 dental offices and pays the workers directly.

We alleged in the lawsuit that Heartland Dental violated federal overtime law by classifying its so-called “S” or salaried office managers in dental offices as exempt from receiving overtime premium pay (or “time-and-a-half” pay) when they worked more than 40 hours in a week.

We pointed out in the complaint that the duties and level of supervision of the “S” office managers were identical to those of other office managers who were being paid hourly and were receiving overtime pay. Accordingly, we asserted Heartland violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. We sought damages, penalties and litigation costs from Heartland Dental.

The lawsuit was filed as a collective action on behalf of all people who worked as salaried office managers for Heartland Dental any time after June 16, 2013. We are confident that there are other present and former employees of Heartland Dental who are or have been in this situation, and we hope that others will come forward.

Mr. Santillo and I are very pleased that we obtained this judgment for our c clients and hope that others will also be brave enough to come forward to try to collect the monies they are owed.

His opinion piece “Should you take Gretchen Carlson’s advice on reporting sexual harassment?” examines Carlson’s strategy of not reporting harassment violations to HR. Click below for the full article. 

The case had a hearing in the Circuit Court on Wednesday. Timothy Maloney believes the state already regulates pesticides enough and no county action is needed. Click below for the full story. 

Principal Veronica Nannis and Joseph Greenwald & Laake co-sponsored Ayuda’s 44th anniversary fundraising event to benefit low-income immigrants in the DC metro area. The event was held at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center in Washington DC Participants included former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, C-SPAN’s Steve Scully and many other accomplished guests. The event featured a panel discussion on immigration and an awards reception. The event, titled “Celebrating Immigrant Lives,” took place on May 16th and was also attended by JGL’s Megan Benevento and Sarah Chu.

Ayuda is the Spanish word for “help,” and that is the mission of the organization.  Ayuda provides immigrants with legal, social and language services in Maryland, DC and Virginia. This is a cause that hits close to home for Veronica, who is the daughter of an immigrant, is proud of her Latina heritage and who wants to protect the path of opportunity of this country for all who seek it.

This week, Joseph Greenwald & Laake would like to recognize Anne Grover for her selection as a 2018 Super Lawyer by Thomson Reuters and Super Lawyer Magazine.

As a principal in Joseph, Greenwald & Laake’s Family Law practice, Anne has represented clients throughout Maryland, as well as in interstate jurisdictional matters and appeals. She is skilled as both a negotiator and a litigator, and brings a sophisticated understanding of financial and tax issues to her analysis of her clients’ needs. Anne is able to think on her feet, calculate tax and income amounts on the fly, and keep strategy in the forefront of her representation. She most enjoys complex business valuations, determining the income of spouses who try to hide money or assets, and navigating difficult jurisdictional issues.

Click below for more on Anne. 

Joseph Greenwald & Laake was well represented at this year’s GBC Annual Meeting, Maryland’s premier business event, on May 15. Following the meeting’s theme, GBC leaders encouraged members to “Focus Forward” in the face of obstacles and setbacks, and Mayor Catherine Pugh, the meeting’s featured speaker, focused on ways to improve the quality of life for Baltimore residents. GBC honored Deputy AG Rod J. Rosenstein with the Howard “Pete” Baker Rawlings Courage in Public Service Award, while the Honorable Rushern L. Baker III, Prince George’s County Executive, attended the meeting as well. You can view photos from the event on the GBC Facebook page. 

On May 1st, principal Jeffrey Greenblatt taught a course for Maryland Legal Aid on the issue of custody evaluators under the new rule, 9-205.3. This complex matter is one that Greenblatt understands well, which is why he chose to share his knowledge with others. 

Maryland Legal Aid is a non-profit that provides free civil legal services to qualifying Marylanders. For more information, please visit http://www.mdlab.org

Maloney has worked with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the past. Click below for the full article. 

 

This week, Joseph Greenwald & Laake would like to recognize attorney Joe Creed for his selection as a 2017 Super Lawyer by Super Lawyers Magazine. Super Lawyers Magazine only selects 5% of attorneys for this honor per year.  He is the author of “Employment Rights of Federal Employees,” a chapter in the Maryland Employment Law Deskbook. He is currently the employee co-chair of the ABA Federal Sector Labor & Employment Law Committee. Click below for more on Joe. 

Brian Markovitz and Brenda Adimora wrote an article in Law360 titled “What United and Fox Can Teach Companies About Victim Blaming.” Click the image below for the full story. 

      Did you know that sometimes civil health care fraud can result in criminal convictions? It’s rare. But when it happens, it ruins lives, careers and risks serious patient harm. What might start small, can quickly snowball when greed eclipses medical judgment. When supervision and peer review get overshadowed by revenue, civil fraud can be a crime.

            Civil fraud turned criminal charges

Just some of the media headlines discussing civil-fraud-turned-criminal have included:

• Dr. Aria Sabit — 235-month prison sentence for health care fraud connected to performing medically unnecessary, invasive spinal surgeries, implanting unnecessary medical devices and kickbacks to his Physician Owned Distributorship (POD).[i] His license was also stripped for gross negligence and “dishonest and corrupt acts.”[ii] 
• Dr. Cully White — 6-month prison sentence, 6-month house arrest after pleading guilty to health care fraud stemming from paying another physician to dictate fabricated surgical reports for services that were not rendered. An unrelated Medical Board investigation into substandard spinal surgeries resulted in the surrender of his license.
• Dr. Abubakar Atiq Durrani — pled not guilty to health care fraud and fled the country following a 10-count indictment charging that he convinced patients to undergo medically unnecessary spinal surgeries. The State of Ohio also permanently revoked his license.
• The president of a hospital and eight co-conspirators were convicted of a massive Medicare fraud scheme to bill for more than $158 million worth of psychiatric services that were not rendered and the payment of kickbacks to recruiters to deliver Medicare ineligible patients. The hospital president was sentenced to 45 years, his son to 20 and a co-conspirator to 12 years in prison.

 

           How do these cases come about? How do they get reported? What could be done to stop them earlier or prevent them all together?

Patients can be whistleblowers; so can your fellow health care providers

On the whole, health care fraud has infinite variations, but in the end, the majority of cases involve:

(1) Medically unnecessary procedures or services not actually rendered;

(2) Kickbacks;  

(3) Fabricated records or bills; or

(4) Upcoding.

Millions of employees, patients and competitors see examples like these or other health care fraud every day, but very few feel compelled to report. For those who do, the terrain can be treacherous and filled with land mines. But, reporting can result in putting an end to egregious fraud and barring providers from having the chance to endanger patients ever again.

In the Dr. Sabit case, the cover was blown when 30 patients spoke up, suing for medical malpractice in less than 18 months. The Medical Board later investigated, stripping him of his license. Two False Claims Act suits were also filed, one by his physician colleagues who felt compelled to report to the Government after internal reporting proved futile. That suit alleges that the hospital’s peer review committee had found the doctor responsible for 71% of unplanned returns to surgery and that his infection rate was two times the national average. His fraud was lucrative. It produced an alleged $8.4 million in Medicare revenue to the hospital and $1.4 million to the doctor for the instruments he used in surgery. The whistleblower suit alleges that the hospital turned a deaf ear to complaints about his recklessly performed surgeries and it failed to properly supervise him due to the high revenues.[iii]

With Dr. Durrani, the unraveling seems to have begun with medical malpractice lawsuits claiming that more than 500 spinal surgeries were botched. The federal authorities investigated when some of his former patients filed suit under the False Claims Act alleging health care fraud stemming from unnecessary spine procedures. UC Health and West Chester Hospital paid $4.1 million in a civil fraud settlement related to the unnecessary surgeries. In all False Claims Act cases, the Government does an initial parallel criminal review. In a case like Durrani, that criminal review resulted in arrest.

The Government is watching and waiting for tips

The Government has task forces set up to investigate all sorts of health care fraud, but they usually have to be tipped off first. In all of the above examples, the fraud began to be uncovered when either the patients sued for malpractice or patients or physicians blew the whistle in sealed filings under the False Claims Act,[iv] which immediately get investigated by the Government. In the above cases, after the initial disclosure, other investigations followed, resulting in licensing and disciplinary proceedings, civil fines and even jail time.

According to a speech given by Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell to the Health Care Compliance Association last April, the Government is looking at health care fraud through a criminal lens, and is getting results. “In the last fiscal year alone, the [Medicare fraud] strike force charged 391 defendants who had collectively billed the Medicare program approximately $1.4 billion. During the last fiscal year, the strike force had a conviction rate of 92 percent – a spectacular rate of success considering the volume and the complexity of the prosecutions – and secured prison sentences averaging 56 months.”[v]

While these examples are rare and extreme, all practices are wise to review and strengthen supervision, quality assurance reviews and compliance. There must be a robust and truly independent peer review process to root out fraud. When these processes and protocols are in place, fraud is stopped before it starts and it cannot spiral out of control.

Veronica Nannis is a principal at Joseph, Greenwald & Laake P.A. in Greenbelt specializing in complex civil litigation, especially in health care. She can be reached at vnannis@jgllaw.com. Sarah Chu, a law clerk at the firm, contributed to this article. She can be reached at schu@jgllaw.com.