The Kentucky Legislature is presently considering advancing legislation that would create new whistleblower style cases and legal claims. Both the State Senate and State House have their versions of how to address these types of claims. Both legislative bodies are proposing triple damages for various state government fraud claims. The Senate’s version allows for triple damages and fees to the private citizens, who brings the action in cases involving Medicaid frauds. The House’s version allows for triple damages and fees to private citizens, who bring these type cases for any type of fraud upon the government.
The way this would work, is in these types of cases, when a private citizen knows of a fraud against the government and government money payments, the private citizen can file a fraud suit on behalf of the State. The Kentucky Attorney General then has a right to intervene and take over the case. If the Kentucky Attorney General does take over the case, and recovers money then the person who filed the suit will be paid 15% of the judgment. If the Kentucky Attorney General does not take over the case, then the private citizen and his/her lawyer prosecute the case, and the private citizen is paid a fee of 30% of the recovered amount. Both legislative bodies’ versions of the law would allow for a triple recovery of damages, which means that whatever was determined to have been defrauded will be multiplied by 3 to determine how much is owed back to the State. This could equivocate to big money rewards for the State and for the private citizen who files the suit.
For more information on the rights of Kentucky whistleblowers, contact the Ackerson Law Offices and Kentucky whistleblower attorney Brent T. Ackerson at (502) 882-5176 or via email, by clicking here for a free consultation.