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Gary Azorsky
Co-Chair of False Claims Act/Qui Tam Practice Group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC
Gary L. Azorsky is the chair of the Whistleblower practice at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, with nearly four decades of legal experience.1 He has dedicated his career to helping right wrongs, recovering nearly $8 billion in defrauded funds for federal and state governments and hundreds of millions of dollars for whistleblower clients.1
Areas of Expertise
Azorsky primarily focuses on:
- Whistleblower claims involving federal securities law violations
- Federal tax law violations
- Commodities Exchange Act violations
- False Claims Act cases in healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking, and defense contracting sectors1
Notable Achievements
- Co-lead counsel in a qui tam action against Wyeth, resulting in a $784.6 million settlement, the seventh-largest False Claims Act recovery on record1
- Involved in groundbreaking Ven-A-Care cases, which set precedents for large FCA multi-state cases1
- Testified before the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee for the advancement of a Vermont State False Claims Act1
- Provided expert guidance on the False Claims Act for a Joint Hearing of the U.S. House Oversight and Judiciary Committees1
Education and Professional Memberships
- BA from the University of Pennsylvania (1980)
- JD from Cornell Law School (1983)
- Member of Taxpayers Against Fraud
- Member of the Federal Bar Association, Qui Tam Section1
Azorsky is known for his expertise in False Claims Act practice and has been qualified by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to testify as an expert in this field.1 He has also worked pro bono for organizations advocating for gun control and against gun violence.1
Highlights
It is a great day for American taxpayers! Today a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in two drug-pricing cases brought by a whistleblower on behalf of Medicare and Medicaid alleging fraud against defendants Safeway and SuperValu. The Court held that when a defendant submits a false claim for payment to the government it cannot assert that it lacked the requisite mental state to establish liability because there exists an objectively reasonable interpretation of a phrase in the statute or regulation it was relying upon when it submitted the claim, if the defendant knew that the interpretation was wrong. What matters is what defendant itself believed about that phrase, and not what some hypothetical third party could have believed, when defendant filed the claim. Score one for the good guys!
