cover image GIANT KILLERS: The Team and the Law that Helped Whistle-Blowers Recover America's Stolen Billions

GIANT KILLERS: The Team and the Law that Helped Whistle-Blowers Recover America's Stolen Billions

Henry Scammell, . . Atlantic Monthly, $25 (306pp) ISBN 978-0-87113-909-2

Freelance author Scammell has written a panegyric to the False Claims Act, a Civil War–vintage statute authorizing private lawsuits (called qui tam actions) to recover money swindled from the federal government. As revised and strengthened in 1986, the False Claims Act permits a whistle-blower to sue on the government's behalf; if the case succeeds, the whistle-blower receives up to 25% of the judgment. According to the author, over $6 billion has been recovered since 1986 through cases under the False Claims Act. Scammell selects for review several prominent cases brought against diverse frauds in the defense and health care industries and the municipal bond market. In each instance, according to Scammell, the motives driving the whistle-blowers are unreservedly noble, and the defendant companies are pervaded by fraud and malice. Moreover, in each case the government regulators are craven and ineffectual and the Department of Justice indifferent, while the private firm representing the whistle-blowers is unerringly brilliant. All this might well be true in the selected cases, since, after all, these lawsuits netted stupendous recoveries. The book's appendix discloses that more than 60% of qui tam complaints filed since 1986 have been dismissed with no recovery. Some account of this high incidence of failure would have been helpful to understanding the overall impact of the law. Omitting any discussion of the act's mixed record of success, Scammell maintains a positive tone in this appreciation of a little-known weapon against public fraud. (Feb.)