Fraud and False Claims

U.S. v. Bay State Ambulance and Hosp. Rental Service, Inc., 874 F.2d 20 (1st Cir. 1989)

Who are the parties?

What were they indicted for?

What did the jury find?

Looking into the crystal ball - who runs Quincy hospital?

Who owns the hospital and employs most of the personnel?

What is Bay State?

Who is Kotzen?

What other businesses does he run?

Do these any independent existence?

What is "front line" service?

Who handled ambulance service before 1980?

What happened with the first round of bids?

What kind of contract did Bay State get in 1981?

What special restriction did the contact contain?

What was the term of the contract?

Who was responsible for the day-to-day oversight of the contract?

What was the problem Felci attending the KC conference?

How did the hospital try to prevent these problems in the future?

How did the hospital set up the re-bid process?

What did Felci do when he discovered he was on the committee?

What did Felci keep to himself?

Why did the CEO not care that Felci was on the committee?

How did Felci sandbag the bid specs?

What role did Felci have in presenting the bids to management?

What did Brewster complain about?

Why was the hospital indifferent to the cost of the services?

Who answered Brewster's complaints?

What did he say about the Blue Cross rates?

What was done with Felci's response?

How else did he deal with the problem?

What are the three different rates?

What was the relationship between Felci and Gonsalves? Was this disclosed?

What did Felci give to Mansfield?

Why did the committee members say they voted for Bay State?

What information did they have about Bay State and where did they get it?

What was EMSTAT and how does it figure in?

What did Felci receive from Bay State?

What did the FBI request from Bay State in the initial investigation?

What did Felci do that his attorney must have loved?

How was this document used at trial?

How did Felci attempt to prevent the document from being used as evidence?

How did the trial judge rule?

What was the link to federal funds?

How did the defense attempt to show that the funds paid to Felci were not bribes?

Did the jury buy the defense arguments?

What were the sentences?

What was the attorney client privilege claim on the Outline?

Who was the attorney the privilege was claimed for, and how was he representing Felci?

What are the four elements necessary to establish privilege?

Who has the burden of proof?

Which element failed and why?

What is the joint defense privilege?

What are the three elements?

What did the court find was the key question?

Does it matter if the court made a correct ruling for the wrong reason?

What was the clearly erroneous finding the court relied on?

What was the first reason the court found that the privilege had been defeated?

What was the second?

What is a "reasonable payment" instruction?

Did the court give it?

What did the judge instruct?

How is this stricter than the test in Hancock and Greber?

What is the 3rd circuit test?

Why does the court not need to decide whether the instruction is too narrow?

What are the terms for the safe harbor for consulting arrangements?

Was this in effect at the time of the crimes?

Why would this transaction not fall under the safe harbor?

Are there other factors that would probably keep any safe harbor from working here?

What are the vagueness issues?

What is the mens rea issues that defendants raise?

What scienter?

What was the scienter instruction?

What was the jurisdictional challenge?

What is the test for jurisdiction in the statute?

Why does it not matter where the instructions were clear as to payors and payees?

Does the government have to prove that the bribe paid off?

Is there a "just following orders" defense?

Were the jury verdicts inconsistent?