A whistleblower is an individual who discloses information on illegal activities within an organization. Whistleblowers usually are people employed in a private enterprise or state agency who exposes to the public dishonesty, illegal actions, mismanagement, and many other related issues.
In other words, a whistleblower (also known as relator) is the one who has insider information of a fraud against the government and files a suit in order to help stop wrongdoers from defrauding the government.
Such wrongdoings typically include a violation of a regulation, law or a threat to public like corruption, fraud, health violation, etc.
Today whistleblowers are protected according to federal and state regulations that have been enacted specifically for this purpose. Also, even without those regulations there are multiple decisions aimed to encourage and protect individuals in qui tam lawsuits.
The False Claims Act, an American federal law, allows individuals not affiliated with the government to file a claim through his/her qui tam lawyer against federal contractors who commit fraud against the government.
People taking the role of whistleblowers are often those who face retaliation by employers, who normally discharge whistleblowers. In such cases, a whistleblower is an at-will employee without a specified term of employment. The employee can leave at any time and the employer is eligible for firing the employee with no reason to quote needed.
Nonetheless, there are exceptions for whistleblowers who are at-will employees.
Employees who provide information on issues affecting only private interests won’t generally reach success. As a general matter, individuals who assert that they have been pushed aside for revealing internal corporate wrongdoing were unsuccessful when determining public policy exceptions to at-will rules.
There are many states that have enforced relator statutes to protect the interests of the relators, but these statutes differ in terms of coverage. Some of them apply only to public employees, while others tend to apply to both public and private employees.
Most Popular Fields for Qui Tam Litigation
Today some of the most popular areas for qui tam litigations are the irregularities related to Medcaid, Medicare, defense, environmental law, billing fraud, etc.
As a general rule, such cases require years until they are settled or litigated. In most cases the plaintiffs come to deal with financial issues. If speaking about Americans, there is a huge number of people who aren’t able to pay their debts. Usually those in financial distress are individuals coming from families with middle income who want to settle their debts.