Directory of Phillips & Cohen Attorneys
Mary Louise Cohen, a founding partner of Phillips & Cohen LLP, has represented whistleblowers for more than 20 years.
Several of those whistleblower cases have settled for hundreds of millions of dollars. Ms. Cohen was either lead counsel or part of a legal team for many prominent whistleblower cases, including:
- A qui tam lawsuit that was part of an $875 million settlement by TAP Pharmaceuticals C one of the largest Medicare fraud settlements ever.
- Two landmark cases against HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare provider, for Medicare “cost report” fraud that were part of an $881 million settlement.
- A whistleblower case against Quest Diagnostics Inc., which settled for $302 million, including a criminal fine.
- A qui tam case that launched the federal government’s LabScam investigation into billing practices of medical testing labs. A series of Medicare billing fraud cases filed on behalf of whistleblowers by Ms. Cohen and her firm against hospital and independent laboratories returned more than $200 million to the Treasury.
- A separate successful qui tam case brought by two emergency room doctors against HCA, which paid $95 million to settle allegations of Medicare billing fraud involving medical lab tests.
- A qui tam lawsuit that a unit of Medtronic Inc. paid $75 million to settle.
Ms. Cohen has brought qui tam lawsuits on behalf of whistleblowers against General Services Administration contractors and defense contractors. She represented a whistleblower in a defense contracting case against General Electric, which G.E. paid the federal government $59.5 million to settle.
Some of Ms. Cohen’s cases and others brought by Phillips & Cohen were the basis of a book published by Atlantic Monthly Press called Giantkillers: The Team and the Law that Help Whistle-blowers Recover America’s Stolen Billions. Ms. Cohen frequently speaks at conferences on whistleblowers and fraud against the government. She has co-authored several articles on whistleblowers and the False Claims Act.
Ms. Cohen graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1977, where she was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. From 1977 to 1981, she was an associate in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia and Washington D.C.
Before specializing in representing whistleblowers, Ms. Cohen spent many years in public service positions. She served as counsel and chief counsel to the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1981 to 1984. The following two years, she served as Legislative Director for a major public interest group in Washington, DC. From 1986 to 1988, she served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies and Business Rights.