John F. Murphy received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and his LLB from Boston College Law School. After practicing as a partner in one of the largest law firms in the state of Connecticut, Attorney Murphy opened his own law office in 1996, concentrating on False Claims Act litigation and civil trial practice. He is admitted to practice in the District Courts of the state of Connecticut, and when the False Claims matter involves a lawsuit outside the state, Mr. Murphy obtains what is known as a pro hac vice admission in that state, to practice, for the one case, in the United States District Court where the fraud took place.

Mr. Murphy is past President of the Federal Bar Association of Hartford County, Founder and first President of the Connecticut Defense Lawyers Association, and he was appointed Chairman of the Defense Research Institute in Connecticut. He served as the Northeast Representative from the New England states to the Defense Research Institute. He is a former member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association.

Mr. Murphy’s publications include "Errors in the Charge" in Litigation, The Journal of the Section of Litigation of the American Bar Association, Vol.14 No.3 Spring 1988; Edited revision, Chapter 13, "Powers of the Trial Judge Regarding Conduct of the Trial" of The Federal Evidence Practice Guide. 1990.

Attorney Murphy served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps and achieved the rank of Captain. He is fluent in Spanish and French.

Recent False Claims Experience

Mr. Murphy brought an action in Connecticut against Raytel Corporation for Medicare fraud. Raytel sells devices and services patients who have pacemakers implanted in their chests. Periodically, when a heart physician orders the test of the pacemaker, the patient uses the Raytel monitoring device to connect by telephone with Raytel. The Raytel employee then performs three thirty second tests of the pacemaker while she views the patient’s heartbeat on a computer screen. From what the employee views on the screen, he or she can tell the patient and the physician whether the pacemaker is functioning properly.

Raytel was being paid approximately $45.00 per test by the Government and was performing approximately 100,000 tests per year when the whistleblower came to see Mr. Murphy. The man reported that his supervisor was using phony printouts in a scheme to bill Medicare for the testing of actual patients who had postponed or cancelled their appointments. The whistleblower was fired by his supervisor when he refused to participate in this scheme. The whistleblower also disclosed to Mr. Murphy that Raytel, after giving bonuses to employees based on the number of tests they performed, had ordered its employees to eliminate thirty seconds of the ninety second test, so that the test would last a minute rather than a minute and a half. This fraudulent act was geared to increasing the number of tests that could be performed, and therefore billed, to Medicare.

After reviewing this web site, when the whistleblower contacted Mr. Murphy, Mr. Murphy learned that the Medicare Fraud Investigators had executed a search warrant at Raytel after the former employee (the whistleblower) had contacted the Government with an anonymous letter. When he came to see Mr. Murphy, almost two years after he had “blown the whistle,” the whistleblower heard “through the grapevine” that the Government was in the process of filing criminal charges. Realizing that time was critical, Mr. Murphy immediately filed the qui tam lawsuit - within six days after he first was retained.

Following a meeting with the Medicare fraud investigators and officials from the Department of Justice, the United States Attorney advised Mr. Murphy and his client that, yes indeed, the “grapevine” was correct - the Government on the following Monday was prepared to get guilty pleas from Raytel, and, further, the Government was in the process of collecting $11.5 million from Raytel in fines and penalties for fraud that was based on the information provided by the relator. But because the qui tam lawsuit had been filed, the United States could not close the matter. The U.S. Attorney asked how much it would take to obtain a release from the relator.

The whistleblower was rewarded - as the False Claims original source – with a payment of $1.62 million dollars.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, Mr. Murphy sued Boeing/McDonnel Douglas in a False Claims action alleging fraud in the purchase of spare parts for the United States Navy training aircraft at the Naval Air Station in Kingsville, Texas. The two whistleblowers were retired Navy personnel – one a former lieutenant and the other a Warrant Officer - and as inventory and supply specialists, they both witnessed how Boeing was overstocking inventory and replacement parts with lead times of often two or three years. Both whistleblowers saw that, by the time the unnecessary parts were shipped from England (which manufactured the training aircraft), not only were an excessive number of parts being paid for, but the replacement parts themselves were very often obsolete. Still, the Navy continued to make what the relator claimed were overpayments to Boeing.

When they challenged the over billing practices by Boeing, both men, in spite of impeccable performance records, were fired.

The United States Attorney in Houston met with the Relators and counsel, and after what the United States said was an in depth investigation, the Government decided not to intervene. It is Mr. Murphy’s belief that the United States viewed the case more as an accounting problem - a bookkeeping problem - rather than as a fraud case. Not seeing any possibilities of filing criminal charges, the Government was not interested.

Because the matter was begun initially by counsel in Corpus Christi who was representing both whistleblowers in a wrongful termination claim in the state courts, the action was settled for a rather disappointing marginal amount.

Mr. Murphy brought a qui tam action against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in the U.S District Court in Akron, Ohio after he was hired by a man who had been working at a factory in Topeka, Kansas on curing tires for Humvees and two and a half ton trucks for the Army. The whistleblower noticed defects in the tires after they were cured, and he kept telling his supervisors that the tires should not be repaired, they should be scrapped. The man was fired by Goodyear after telling his supervisors, and then the Inspector General for the Army, that the tires were defective. The United States did not intervene after its investigation determined that the contract with Goodyear and the U.S. Army actually allowed Goodyear to repair tires that were defective when they were cured. Having concluded (from their perspective) that this portion of the plaintiff’s allegations were without foundation, the United States Government had no interest in intervening in the case.

The action was begun before 9/11 and before the war in Iraq, and an initial problem with the case had to do with proving that the tires were defective. In other words, the whistleblower who was working on the tire assembly line saw that the tires were defective. But there were no specific tires he could point to; a physical inspection of which he felt would demonstrate that the tires were defectively manufactured. In fact, the Judge in the District Court in Cleveland, where the case was transferred, said the same thing – “If there isn’t any proof of field failures – proof that the tires you claim were defective actually were defective – there isn’t any case.”

At a deposition that was taken in Warren, Michigan, the headquarters of TACOM, the Tank and Armored Command division, which is the government facility in charge of purchasing tires for the Army, Mr. Murphy learned that all tires, in every theater of operation, but particularly in Iraq, were being replaced at an unusually high rate, and he also discovered that the Army through TACOM had recently signed a contract with an independent automotive testing facility in order to determine why there was such a high tire replacement. Under the terms of the contract, Mr. Murphy discovered that, in October of 2003, a team from the Nevada Automotive Testing Center and Hodges, Inc., was being trained to be sent to Kuwait before the end of the year to determine the causes of the failed tires.

The judge in Cleveland agreed to wait for the results from Hodges, Inc., the company that owned and operated the Nevada Automotive Testing Center. Mr. Murphy wrote to Hodges and asked if the inspection and examination of the failed tires would include scientific testing that would determine whether any of the failures were caused by defects when they were manufactured. The United States Attorney, who was copied in on the letter, admonished Mr. Murphy for having written to Hodges. Mr. Murphy was told that he should limit any contact with officials of the United States, or their agents, or any persons under contract with the United States. Because of a hope that sometime in the future he would be seeking the cooperation of the United States Attorney, Mr. Murphy did not wish to have the United States Attorney as an adversary, and so he did not respond to the letter, and made no further contact with Hodges or with any other Government agent or agency. Mr. Murphy never did get an answer to the question he posed to Hodges – whether the testing was comprehensive enough so that the tests would determine once and for all whether there were failures caused by the way the tires were manufactured.

In the Spring of 2004, the Assistant U.S. Attorney advised the Court that the Hodges report on the examination of failed tires now involved National Security, so that the full details of the report could not be provided. The U.S. Attorney provided a summary of the report during the summer of 2004. The TACOM employee monitoring the results of the examinations of the tires, stated in an affidavit, that Hodges had made a visual inspection of some 7,000 tires that had failed, and then made a “more detailed examination” of some 500 of these tires. The Army employee advised the Court that as far as the investigators could tell, there were no tire defects that resulted from the manufacturing process. Mr. Murphy never learned the nature and extent of the testing – what the testing included, whether there were X-rays of the treads in the tires, whether the tires were cut open, or anything else that might give substantial weight to the report.

After the affidavit was filed, the lawyers for Goodyear submitted a motion for summary judgment, and the United States Attorney’s office agreed with Goodyear. The Court then granted summary judgment. The case was doomed when, in its brief, Goodyear took as an “admission” the fact that an agent of the United States – the person from the Army who had signed the affidavit – admitted that there were no defects in the manufacture of the tires.

Mr. Murphy brought a False Claims action against Melrose-Wakefield Hospital for Medicare fraud in the U.S. District Court in Boston after being contacted by a respiratory therapist who was blowing the whistle on overcharging, on tests being performed without medical necessity, on Arterial Blood Gas Testing with defective equipment, on the “bundling” of charges to Medicare, on “upcoding” in diagnosis for a higher reimbursement rate, and on a host of additional practices that Mr. Murphy alleged had produced undeserved payments from the Government to Melrose-Wakefield. The Respiratory Therapist claimed he was fired for repeatedly bringing the neglect and the fraud to the attention of his superiors and to HCFA.

The Government made a decision not to intervene in this action. Prior to retaining Mr. Murphy, the Relator had commenced an unlawful discharge action under the rubric False Claims Action with another attorney, where only the unlawful termination was being alleged in an attempt to get federal jurisdiction. The case was assigned to the same Judge who dismissed the earlier action. And after one dismissal and two appeals, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case was regrettably closed with no recovery.

Mr. Murphy represented the whistleblower in a qui tam lawsuit against Balfour-Beatty and others. What follows is the press release from the Department of Justice:

One additional recent case involves a health care provider. The matter is presently under seal, and Mr. Murphy therefore is prohibited from mentioning the factual pattern in any detail. In this Medicare fraud claim, the U.S. Attorney has obtained a partial lifting of the seal in order to approach the health care provider with discussions of the possibilities of a settlement.

Attorney’s Fees and Expenses

Every fee agreement and expense proposal is in writing and explains all the charges in detail. Because most relators (whistleblowers) cannot afford to pay hourly fees as they are incurred, it is John Murphy's practice to accept cases on a contingent fee basis. He is paid only if there is an actual financial recovery, with the fee being a one third contingent fee on any total recovery that is awarded to the relator. Expenses are paid by the client at the close of the case regardless of the outcome.

Confidentiality; Communications; Attorney Client Privilege

If your company - your employer, your hospital, etc. - has done any of the things enumerated on this web site, it is important that you get a lawyer to take a look at the facts you have accumulated. Communications with The Law Office of John F. Murphy are confidential, and are protected by the attorney client privilege. The phone number (860) 233-9946 is where Attorney Murphy can be reached. A fax number is listed as well as an E-mail address. If you wish to contact Attorney Murphy and you are concerned about confidentiality, please leave a message or simply your name without the message, or don't even leave your name if you wish not to, but rather let Attorney Murphy's office know how you would like to make contact. Even if no such instructions are given, when Mr. Murphy returns the telephone call, he will say “Mr. Murphy is returning the phone call.” He does not even identify himself as an attorney. In short, Mr. Murphy does everything he can to protect you as he arranges for a meeting to discuss what is needed to pursue your claim.

A Word About John F. Murphy as a Trial Lawyer

Each client is unique. John F. Murphy takes the time to understand the individual's personal circumstances and objectives. He is dedicated and willing to make a long-term commitment to do whatever is necessary for each client's case. His practice offers the depth of experience one might expect in a large metropolitan law firm, but he has additional dimensions which set him apart. He brings to each and every claim a constructive imagination as well as caring, personal treatment. As a seasoned trial attorney and negotiator, he takes pride in the value he adds through his skill, experience and responsiveness to every client's needs. He enjoys a reputation for integrity, competence, efficiency and professionalism. He believes that he is seen within his profession as an attorney who consistently strives to achieve outstanding results for his clients.

John F. Murphy has negotiated and settled more than one thousand cases through his years of courtroom experience as a trial attorney. He offers a unique blend of legal competence and negotiating expertise, the highest rating from fellow attorneys, diligent, thorough preparation, as well as compassion and understanding. Prior to concentrating his focus on the False Claims Act, he tried cases in both the state and federal court system involving franchise agreements, death actions, covenants not to compete, products liability claims and a broad range running from corporate to personal injury litigation. He has courtroom experience involving the proceeds of a life insurance policy and the interpretation of the presumption of death of a missing person after a seven year disappearance. He has been involved in all phases of the claims procedure - from arbitration proceedings of underinsured motorist claims to jury trials involving simple assault, brain stem injury and wrongful death. He has defended a man accused of arson murder. He has tried cases involving attempted murder and simple assault. He recovered a quarter million dollars for a woman who was sexually involved with the father of her best friend when she was thirteen years old.

John F. Murphy is prepared to adapt to and accommodate either the simple or the complex False Claims matter. He has been seasoned with jury trials which tested the standards of crash worthiness of a minivan in a head-on collision, and he has tried the issue of facial scarring of a five-year-old attacked by a vicious dog. He has pursued claims against manufacturers in death actions resulting from defects in the automatic shutoff valve in the explosion of a furnace, and he has brought lawsuits for the "slip and fall" on an icy surface. He has litigated both the duty to warn on the susceptibility to rollover of an all-terrain vehicle and claims relating to construction and design defects in the manufacture of a ladder.

Because of his broad range of experience, Mr. Murphy has a great deal of insight in evaluating the ranges of recovery in all civil actions involving False Claims. Because he has practiced in all courts of the state and throughout the federal system of the United States, he is uniquely positioned to give clients what they need, deserve and expect.

Contact John F. Murphy if you believe you have a False Claims case.