Philadelphia Business Journal honors Shauna Itri among its “Best of the Bar”

Seeger Weiss LLP is proud to announce that partner Shauna Itri has been named to Philadelphia Business Journal’s 2020 “Best of the Bar,” which lists the city’s top 40 lawyers. Itri has been honored for her work in the practice of business litigation.

For well over a decade, Itri has led litigation teams in complex fraud cases in both state and federal courts. Itri’s nationwide practice has focused on representing plaintiffs in various settings — including securities and consumer class actions; antitrust; and cases involving patient harm. Itri also has extensive experience representing whistleblowers in False Claims Act lawsuits and other whistleblower programs throughout the United States.

Recently, Itri has been involved in several notable cases. In one, medical device company Covidien agreed to pay $13 million to resolve a False Claims Act lawsuit filed by Itri on behalf of her client, a former Covidien employee, who blew the whistle on a kickback scheme designed to defraud Medicare programs. In another False Claims Act lawsuit, genetics testing company Renaissance RX (or RenRX) agreed to pay $42.6 million to resolve six different whistleblower lawsuits that contained allegations of payments to providers in exchange for their ordering RenRX’s genetic tests, inappropriate payments to independent sales representatives which violated the anti-kickback statute, and lack of medical necessity of the genetic testing. Notably, RenRX also consented to a 25-year exclusion from all federal healthcare programs. “It’s pretty significant,” Itri said. “This is always an option CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] has in its arsenal but, in my experience, it’s rarely used. That said, it’s effective because exclusion from Medicare [represents] a significant loss of revenue.”

Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Best of the Bar” list is compiled by a panel of outside judges—former Philadelphia Bar Chancellor Debbie Gross, former Temple Law dean Carl Singley, and legal recruiting firm Mestel & Co. executive director Rona Sisson—who select lawyers who have distinguished themselves in their practice specialties. The is the 4^th annual “Best of the Bar” list published by Philadelphia Business Journal.

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