Advocates for Justice

Niall McCarthy and Eric Buescher recently published a chapter titled “Fighting Financial Elder Abuse in California” for the Thomson Reuters / Astapore Books publication, “Inside the Minds: Elder Law Client Strategies in California.”  The chapter describes the current state of financial elder abuse law in California and discusses strategies for plaintiffs to successfully prosecute civil financial elder abuse cases in a variety of contexts.  

Congratulations to Anne Marie Murphy for being selected by The Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California.

With the mounting costs of higher education, students are increasingly relying on federal financial aid to finance their education. As a result, taxpayer monies are increasingly being advertised and used by higher education institutions, both non-profit and for-profit, to maintain student enrollment. As discussed in an earlier post, for-profit schools must certify they are in compliance with various federal statutes and regulations in order to receive federal financial aid, including: (1) being accredited by an approved agency; (2) that they do not derive at least 10% of their revenues from non-federal sources, known as the 90-10 Rule; (3) that they do not pay recruiters bonuses or other incentives payments based on student enrollments; and (4) that students are making satisfactory progress toward completing their course of study.  

Nanci Nishimura has been selected by the White House to represent the Top 50 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at a White House Conference on Education and Entrepreneurship of Asian American businesses.

On Monday, May 4, 2015, courts unsealed two health care fraud cases and revealed settlement amounts totaling over $461.5 million. In Carlisle v. Pacific Ambulance et al., Case No. 3:09-cv-02628-L-BLM (S.D. Cal.), whistleblower Kelvin Carlisle alleged that several ambulance companies engaged in an unlawful kickback scheme by providing heavily discounted ambulance services in exchange for exclusive rights to provide services to the hospitals. Carlisle stated that the scheme incentivized hospitals to order excessive and unnecessary medical services and seek reimbursement from Medicare. This case settled for $11.5 million, with Carlisle receiving $1.7 million.