Fighting Corruption: The False Claims Act Legacy

In a discussion with UC Berkeley Law Dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, he highlighted a bedrock area of CLIPI's impact: "CLIPI played such a crucial role with regard to the False Claims Act."

He's talking about using the law to fight corruption. CLIPI co-founder, John Phillips, crafted the critical amendments to the False Claims Act that Congress enacted in 1986, and CLIPI then established how to use it.

The False Claims Act provides a legal basis for whistleblowers to bring claims about fraud against defense contractors, medical providers, and many other vendors to the government. It's been extraordinarily successful.

Ann Carlson shared a story from her time as chief counsel at National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Early in her tenure, she met with attorneys who represented whistleblowers. She knew exactly what they did because she'd worked on False Claims Act cases with John Phillips.

"I was like a unicorn," she said. The whistleblower lawyers couldn't believe they were meeting with an agency chief counsel who understood their work and was sympathetic to what they were trying to do.

Here's another legacy: the False Claims Act has been so successful that whistleblower provisions have spread far beyond the original statute. NHTSA now has its own whistleblower protections. Other agencies have followed suit.

As Ann noted: "This is the legacy about CLIPI…and the False Claims Act... having been exposed to some remarkable work that CLIPI and CLIPI's successor firm gave me knowledge and experience that was super important."

Public interest law doesn't just win cases. It creates legal frameworks that enable accountability across entire sectors of government and industry.