The United States spends nearly $600 billion every year on defense. A significant portion of our defense budget is spent on goods and services provided by defense contractors.
A defense contractor is a business or organization that bids on contracts from the government to manufacture goods or provide services for the military and/or the Department of Defense. In some cases, defense contractors are also referred to as military contractors because all or most of their business comes from providing goods or services to the military.
Defense contractors manufacture weapons, aircraft, ships, vehicles and specialized electronic systems. They also provide important services, including logistics, technical training and support, intelligence, engineering, consulting, maintenance, security management and specialized private military services. According to a report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, defense contractors made up more than half of the Department of Defense’s total workforce during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some of the largest defense contractors include:
Defense contractor fraud occurs when defense contractors submit false claims about the products they manufacture or the services they provide the government. There are a number of different ways in which defense companies can cheat the government.
Often, when a company is guilty of defense contractor fraud, they are guilty of multiple types of fraud. In many cases, whistleblowers bring fraud allegations to the government’s attention.
Every year, defense contractors are hit with whistleblower lawsuits alleging millions in fraud and abuse, making the industry one of the biggest targets of false claims litigation under the False Claims Act. Over just one three-week period in 2014, the Department of Justice received nearly $25 million in the settlement of three False Claims Act (FCA) actions—all of them involving defense contractor fraud. A brief summary of these actions illustrates the broad nature of defense contractor fraud, as well as the importance of the whistleblower in exposing FCA violations.
Defense companies who commit fraud are stealing taxpayer dollars that fund our nation’s defense. These greed-driven fraud schemes put the lives of our military servicemen and women at risk and undermine our nation’s security. As a whistleblower, you can help put a stop to defense contractor fraud by exposing these corrupt companies.
The False Claims Act states that a whistleblower can file a lawsuit on behalf of the United States if they have original information about a company making false claims to defraud the government. Qui tam lawsuits filed by whistleblowers have recovered billions of taxpayer dollars from defense contractors who submitted false claims in order to cheat the government. In one of the largest defense contractor fraud settlements in history, a whistleblower filed a false claims lawsuit against a company that allegedly failed to disclose information on the failure of electrical components the company had sold to the United States for use in defense satellites. The company paid $325 million to settle the claims and the whistleblower received a $48.8 million award.
If you have information that a government contractor is committing fraud, you may be entitled to a reward. Federal false claims cases often result in large multi-million dollar settlements and, in order to encourage people to come forward with information about fraud, the government offers whistleblower rewards up to 25 percent of the total amount recovered in a successful enforcement action. Expert legal assistance can protect your rights, give you the best chance of a successful outcome and can maximize the size of your reward.
Please contact the Wisner Baum whistleblower team if you are considering taking legal action.
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In May of 2019, the jury in the case of Pilliod et al. v, Monsanto Company ordered the agrochemical giant to pay $2.055 billion in damages to the plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a Bay Area couple in their 70s. R. Brent Wisner served as co-lead trial attorney for the Pilliods, delivering the opening and closing statements and cross-examining several of Monsanto’s experts. Wisner Baum managing shareholder, Michael Baum and attorney Pedram Esfandiary also served on the trial team in the Pilliod case.
The judge later reduced their award to $87M. Monsanto appealed the Pilliod’s verdict which the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District denied on August 9, 2021. Monsanto then requested the California Supreme Court review the appeal’s court decision, which the court denied on Nov. 17, 2021. Monsanto (Bayer) then submitted a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court which SCOTUS denied on June 27, 2022, allowing the final judgment of $87M to remain intact.
$289.2 million jury verdict in Monsanto Roundup trial
Wisner Baum co-represented Dewayne “Lee” Johnson in the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. On Aug. 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto to pay $39.25 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages to Mr. Johnson, a former groundskeeper who alleged exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides caused him to develop terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Months after the jury verdict, the judge overseeing the trial reduced the punitive damages to $39.25 million. Mr. Johnson decided to accept the remittitur, bringing the adjusted amount awarded to Mr. Johnson $78.5 million.
Monsanto (Bayer) appealed the verdict and Johnson cross appealed. On July 20, 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict against Monsanto but reduced Mr. Johnson’s award to $20.5 million. The company chose not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the litigation.
In 2016, Wisner Baum attorney Timothy A. Loranger and six other attorneys in the Plaintiffs’ Management Committee were able to secure a $265 million settlement for victims of the 2015 Amtrak 188 derailment in Philadelphia, one of the largest in the U.S. for 2016.
