Who We Are

Over the past five years alone, the Attorneys at GBB have worked with whistleblowers in cases resulting in the return of more than $ 5 billion to federal and state governments. GBB attorneys have worked with their whistleblower clients to secure recoveries against the largest pharmaceutical companies, major energy companies, health care providers, and defense contractors. Firm counsel have litigated under Federal and State False Claims Acts and have brought cases under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower programs.

As a boutique high impact firm, GBB brings a unique blend of expertise to its cases. Reuben Guttman, Traci Buschner, and Justin Brooks  have been lead or co-lead counsel for whistleblowers in some of the most significant cases brought under Federal and State False Claims Acts including U.S. ex rel. McCoyd v. Abbott Labs ($1.6 Billion recovered for the government); U.S. ex rel. Graydon v. GSK ($1.2 Billion recovered); U.S. ex rel. DeMott v. Pfizer($2.3 Billon recovered); U.S. ex rel. Kurnik v. Amgen ($24 million recovered); U.S. ex rel. Bunk v. Birkhart ($12 million recovered); U.S. ex rel. Dogramji v. CHS ($98 million recovered); U.S. ex rel. Szymoniak v. DocX ($98 million recovered from five banks as part of Government’s $25 Billion banking settlement); U.S. ex rel. Kurnik v. Omnicare ($4.9 million recovered); and U.S. ex rel Kurnik v. PharMerica ($2.5 million recovered). They also have expertise in handling complex commercial litigation, employment litigation, and  corporate governance matters on behalf of individuals, corporate clients, and institutional investors.

For its health care cases, the firm relies on the guidance of Dr. Caroline Poplin, the firm’s Medical Director and Of Counsel. A graduate of the University of Rochester Medical School who served on the faculty of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences during her tenure as a physician at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Dr. Poplin also received a law degree from Yale Law School and practiced as an Attorney with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Poplin has active medical licenses in Maryland and Virginia. She is a member of the DC Bar.

Co-author of one of the seminal books on government contracts, The Shadow Government (Pantheon 1976), firm Of Counsel Dan Guttman has been one of the leading experts on the government’s use of private contractors. He has been counsel to United States Senate oversight committees investigating government contracts, energy counsel to Dow Chemical and other companies, and special counsel in US Senate oversight investigation of US government contracting, shared in an investigative journalism award for a study of $900 billion in Pentagon contracting. Dan is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governance studies, where he has taught courses in the contracting out of the US government. He served as Executive Direct of President Clinton’s Advisory Commission on Human Radiation and was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a Commissioner of the United States Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. He has been a partner in a law firm (Spiegel and McDiarmid) that pioneered in the application of the antitrust law to the electric utility industry. He was a Fulbright scholar in China and is a professor at New York University Shanghai, visiting Professor at the Peking University Law school law clinic, and fellow of the Tsinghua University China/US Center. He is a fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration.

Of Counsel Elizabeth Shofner has a wealth of experience in a defense and plaintiff capacity in complex commercial litigation, including Medicaid, consumer fraud, mortgage-backed securities litigation and corporate governance. She has also developed an expertise in appellate work, beginning with a several year clerkship to Hon. John M. Walker of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.